"Oh, thank you, sir! You are so kind!" and Will bounded away to look for his gold-piece.
But then he remembered that if he went at a rapid pace it might escape his eye; he walked slowly, searching the ground at every step of the way.
Presently he walked bolt up against a gentleman who had been watching his approach for half a block.
"Oh, pardon me, sir!" he said.
"Certainly, my boy; but you appear to be searching for something that you have lost?"
The face of the man was full of kindness, though stern, and his voice had a sympathetic tone in it that touched the boy, who told his misfortune to the stranger, adding:
"It was all we had, sir, and poor mother's heart will break, I know."
The man looked like one who had seen the world, and he dressed as one who had a plethoric pocket-book.
He was a reader of human nature, and saw that it was no begging for sympathy that the boy told his story for.
A man of fifty, perhaps, he was well preserved, and yet there was that in his face that seemed to indicate that his life had not been all made up of sunshine.