across the common at full speed, making the
most wonderful bounds and leaps, and howling
like a demoniac.

Some servant of the great house had seen
the attack, and came to the rescue of Nicholas,
but found him lying, to all appearance, dead
in a pool of blood. He rushed back to the
house to report the murder. Mrs. Salt
fainted. Madam Trevor applied restoratives
with her own hands, sent off a man on horseback
for a doctor, and gave orders that
Nicholas should be brought to the house.
By the time the doctor arrived he had begun
to give slight signs of life; but the doctor
gave slender hopes of his recovery. However,
Madam Trevor, who was an amateur in
doctoring, and who had distilled waters of
wondrous powers, in which she had unlimited
faith, attended on him herself, and administered
her own remedies, and whether the
credit was due to them or to the doctor, or
to the good constitution of the patient, was
a disputable point— but Nicholas began to
get well, though it was clear he would not
be able to move about or do any sort of work
for a long time. And in the meantime what
was to become of him and his mother, who,
with her broken wrist, was almost as helpless
as her son?

The fortunes of Nicholas hung on a hair.
There seemed nothing left for them but to go
to the workhouse.

Little did Mr. Joshua Trevor, of Clifton
House, Highgate, and of Mincing Lane in the
City, and a confirmed old bachelor, dream
that his apparently sudden and entirely
spontaneous determination to pay his great aunt,
Madam Trevor, of Stafford, a visit on his way
to Harrogate, was destined to be the turning
point in the life and fortunes of poor Nicholas,
the little vagabond and mountebank! If
ever a man hated beggars and vagrants,
Joshua Trevor was that man: if ever a man
considered stage-playing and Bartholomew
Fair a shame and nuisance to a Christian
land— again we say that Joshua Trevor,
Turkey merchant and member of the Society
of Friends, was that man; and never was
there a man more firmly purposed to have
no dealings with the Devil or any of his
works (except making money), nor with any
of his servants, and he always looked
suspiciously on all poor people who had no
substantial ostensible trade or calling. Public
charities he patronised— they were organised
institutions, and somehow the list of portly
wealthy patrons kept the objects of charity
out of sight, besides reducing them to a puny
official existence. Yet this Joshua Trevor,
little as he dreamed of it or intended, was
travelling in his own coach from London to
Stafford to— become the benefactor to a little
mountebank.

Madam Trevor was thrown into a flutter
at the prospect of receiving a visit from her
nephew, whom she believed to be as great a
man as he believed himseif. In her eyes he
represented all the fortunes of all the
Gresharas and Whittingtons, and all the Lord
Mayors of London who ever had been or
were to be. It was fortunate she had no
long time to spend in expectation— the letter
announcing his advent only arrived a few
hours before his coach and four horses drove
up the avenue to the great house.

Joshua Trevor having arrived at the great
house, proceeded to fulfil his destiny. He
saw Nicholas, and felt sorry for the pale,
patient, intelligent-looking little fellow. He
heard his story, and felt still more sorry for
him. His horror of the workhouse and his
mother's decent, hard-working appearance
softened his prejudices, and finally the bright
idea suggested itself of ending all difficulties
by taking Nicholas himself and putting him
to some trade. It was pleasant to him to see
how easily he could perform what to these
poor people looked like a miracle of power
and goodness. So he announced to Madam
Trevor that he would take Nicholas and put
him in a way of earning an honest living.
The commotion, gratitude, and joy, and the
great relief of mind that this gracious ukase
caused throughout the great house, flattered
all the sensibilities of Joshua Trevor's heart.
He was not a metaphysician; and, no doubt,
confounded gratified vanity with the voice of
an approving conscience, but that did not
much signify to other people. So Nicholas
bade adieu for ever to caravans and fairs,
and was taken away to seek his fortune
under better auspices. His mother remained
an inmate of the great house, to make herself
generally useful.

Joshua Trevor reaped the reward of his
good deed sooner than he expected. It came
sharp on the heels of it. At Harrogate he
fell ill, and Nicholas nursed him as he would
have done his mother. When Joshua Trevor
began to get better Nicholas could read to
him, and talk to him, and amuse him as he
never had been amused in his life before.
When, at last, he was able to return to
London, Nicholas was inducted into all the
honours and prospects of a high stool in
Joshua Trevor's counting-house, and every
body knew all the possibilities that lay in
that fact. From that time Nicholas never
looked behind him: he went on steadily from
one step to another. When Joshua Trevor
died, he left the bulk of his fortune to public
charities, a share of his business to Nicholas
and ten thousand pounds.

Nicholas was a prosperous man: he had
always been a good son, and his mother
might have lived like a lady and had a
carriage to go about in if she would have
come to live with Nicholas; but she
preferred stopping with Madam Trevor as long as
the old lady lived. May Trevor had married
and gone abroad, and when her mother died
pretty little gentle May Trevor had found
out that she had made a mistake in her
marriage, and that her fine gentleman husband