For many minutes Ralph stood still, in gratified amazement. It was the first time in all his life, so far as memory served him, that any one had kissed him. And that this grief-stricken lady should be the first—it was very strange, but very beautiful, indeed. He felt that by that kiss he had been lifted to a higher level, to a clearer, purer atmosphere, to a station where better things than he had ever done before would be expected of him now; he felt, indeed, as though it were the first long reach ahead to attain to such a manhood as was Robert Burnham's. The repetition of this name in his mind brought him to himself, and he turned into the parlor just as the last one of the other boys was passing out. He hurried across the room to look upon the face of his friend and employer. It was not the unpleasant sight that he had feared it might be. The dead man's features were relaxed and calm. A smile seemed to be playing about the lips. The face had all its wonted color and fulness, and one might well have thought, looking on the closed eye-lids, that he lay asleep.
Standing thus in the presence of death, the boy had no fear. His only feeling was one of tenderness and of deep sorrow. The man had been so kind to him in life, so very kind. It seemed almost as though the lips might part and speak to him. But he was dead; this was his face, this his body; but he, himself, was not here. Dead! The word struck harshly on his mind and roused him from his reverie. He looked up; the boys had all gone, only the kind-faced woman stood there with a puzzled expression in her eyes. She had chanced to mark the strong resemblance between the face of the dead man and that of the boy who looked upon it; a resemblance so striking that it startled her. In the countenance of Robert Burnham as he had looked in life, one might not have noticed it, but—
"Sometimes, in a dead man's face,
To those that watch it more and more,
A likeness, hardly seen before,
Comes out, to some one of his race."
It was so here. The faces of the dead man and of the living boy were the faces of father and son.
Ralph turned away, at last, from the lifeless presence before him, from the searching eyes of the woman, from the hall with its dim suggestions of something in the long ago, and went out into the street, into the sunlight, into the busy world around him; but from that time forth a shadow rested on his young life that had never darkened it before,—a shadow whose cause he could not fathom and whose gloom he could not dispel.
CHAPTER V.
IN SEARCH OF A MOTHER.
Three months had gone by since the accident at Burnham Shaft. They were summer months, full of sunshine and green landscapes and singing birds and blossoming flowers and all things beautiful. But in the house from which the body of Robert Burnham had been carried to the grave there were still tears and desolation. Not, indeed, as an outward show; Margaret Burnham was very brave, and hid her grief under a calm exterior, but there were times, in the quiet of her own chamber, when loneliness and sorrow came down upon her as a burden too great for her woman's heart to bear. Still, she had her daughter Mildred, and the child's sweet ways and ceaseless chatter and fond devotion charmed her, now and then, into something almost like forgetfulness. She often sighed, and said: "If only Ralph had lived, that I might have both my children with me now!"
One morning, toward the middle of September, Lawyer John H. Sharpman rang the bell at the door of the Burnham mansion, sent his card up to Mrs. Burnham, and seated himself gracefully in an easy-chair by the parlor window to wait for her appearance.
She came soon and greeted him with gracious dignity. He was very courteous to her; he apologized for coming, in this way, without previous announcement, but said that the nature of his errand seemed to render it necessary.