"Faith, sir," he replied with a happy smile, "there's nothing I'd like better, if I may say so; and if you're pleased to send me, I'll do my very best to learn all they'll teach me."
"I fully believe you will, my boy," said Mr. Drummond, smiling back at him; "I'll have arrangements made without delay."
For two full years Terry toiled hard at the academy, overcoming one by one many difficulties and temptations that beset his path, and making such rapid improvement from every point of view that, when he returned to his desk, the keenest eye could hardly have recognized in the good-looking youth with so easy a bearing the ragged wharf boy of a little while before.
During his absence Black Mike died in hospital, and kind-hearted Mr. Drummond placed Mrs. Ahearn in a comfortable cottage far away from Blind Alley. Here Terry joined her, and the good woman had the happiness of living to see her son become one of the most trusted and highly-paid employés of Drummond and Brown.
Terry never forgot his own past. His heart was always warm in sympathy towards the boys that played about the wharves, and he lost no opportunity of saying a kind word or doing a kind deed on their behalf; and they had no better friend in Halifax than Mr. Terrence Ahearn, who, in rising from their ranks to a position of honour and emolument, showed no foolish pride, nor sought to conceal whence he had come.
THE END.