IX MY CHARLIE DAVID DRUMMOND died suddenly; almost before he reached his prime. With a world of work undone, he sank into the great stream of silence, leaving everwidening circles of regret to mark where he had gone down. Poor Mary, who had clung to him and grown to him, was giddy and dazed with the abruptness of that disappearance. Trembling, frightened, unnerved, she threw out sensitive feelers for the first hold that should be offered her; and Charliewho had his father's broad shoulders, blue eyes, and sunny smile Charlie it was, her eighteen-year -old son, who held out his hands to her and said: "Poor little Mother." Sitting in that grief-laden house, behind the drawn blinds, in the first days of her widowhood, it was the big boy who laid his head down in her lap and wept with her. And it comforted her to comfort him; it was balm to her to caress his hair, to kiss his forehead, to murmur to him tender, loving words, and feel those sobs, that seemed to echo in his heart from hers, grow less in the caressing. "Charlie must be father now," she said. "Charlie will be father now," she told the little brother and sisters who could not understand as he could, and were less to her in her desolateness. Poor Mary! she had five young children besides her eldest, four little girls and the baby boy-and Charlie must be father to them all. He had been in the office for six months before David Drummond's death; it did not seem to his loving mother that the term was insufficient to make him master of the business. She trusted him, as such women will trust their men-folk; unlimited power was given to him, unlimited authority. Her friends-she had a large social circle and many relatives-remonstrated with her; they pointed out that Charlie was after all but a lad, a mere schoolboy, that she was placing in his inexperienced hands not only her own future but the future of her girls. They tried to hint to her; to remind her that Charlie had never been considered such a model boy while his father lived; that he had left school abruptly; that David had looked for trouble with him, and had kept him strictly under his own eye in consequence. But remonstrances were all in vain. Mrs Drummond smiled at her visitors, and |