But he wanted nothing and nobody, only to be left alone with her.
"So she sent the nurse out and sat down on the side of the bed to hear what he had to say to her, for he looked very eager and was smiling in a way to make her heart ache.
"You must remember," continued Mrs.Packard, "that at the time Miss Thankful was telling this story we were in the very room where it had all happened.

As she reached this part of her narration, she pointed to the wall partitioning off the corridor, and explained that this was where the bed stood,--an old wooden one brought down from her own attic.
"'It creaked when I sat down on it,' said she, 'and I remember that I felt ashamed of its shabby mattress and the poor sheets.

But we had no better,' she moaned, 'and he did not seem to mind.' I tell you this that you may understand what must have taken place in her heart when, a few minutes later, he seized her hand in his and said that he had a great secret to communicate to her.

Though he had seemed the indifferent brother for years, his heart had always been with his home and his people, and he was going to prove it to her now; he had made money, and this money was to be hers and Charity's.

He had saved it for them, brought it to them from the far West; a pile of money all honestly earned, which he hoped would buy back their old house and make them happy again in the old way.