"It is Ralph's!

A petition had been presented to the Orphans' Court, asking for a citation to Margaret Burnham, as administrator of her husband's estate, to appear and show cause why she should not pay over to Ralph's guardian a sufficient sum of money to educate and maintain the boy in a manner befitting his proper station in life.

" "About how old?" "About Ralph's age, I should think.

"It was Ralph's!"

This was the only cloud in the otherwise clear sky of Ralph's happiness.

Billy often thought, as he dumped a carload into the slide, and saw a huge lump of coal that glistened brightly, or glowed with iridescent tints, or was veined with fossil-marked or twisted slate, that perhaps, down below in the screen-room, Ralph's eyes would see the brightness of the broken lump, or Ralph's fingers pick the curious bits of slate from out the moving mass.

Meanwhile he was looking down into Ralph's white face.

"Keep up your courage, my son," said the sheriff kindly, for the sight of Ralph's face aroused his sympathy.

The breaker boss said that no cleaner coal was emptied into the cars at the loading place than that which came down through Ralph's chute.

It was Ralph's duty to take the mule from the stable, to fasten him to a trip of empty mine cars, and to make him draw them to the little cluster of chambers at the end of the branch that turned off from the upper-level heading.

" The mule raised his head and looked around him, then he rested his nose against Ralph's shoulder again.

"I'm glad Ralph's no' workin'

It is a matter for sincere congratulation that Ralph's identity was not established by them at that time.

" "But he saved Ralph's life.

Conway came to the carriage, and, in a voice broken with emotion, told the story of Ralph's heroic effort to save a human life at the risk of his own.

A vague solution of the mystery of Ralph's disappearance was dawning on him.

But it was not Ralph's voice sounding through the darkness; it was only the ghost of Ralph's voice.

The other lay cold in Ralph's clasp, and through it there gradually stole to him the benumbing influence of the thoughts she was thinking: the sense of the approach of illness, anxiety, and expense, and of the general unnecessary disorganization of their lives.

That such a thing should have happened to his only grandson was probably the bitterest experience of his pleasantly uneventful life; and it added a touch of irony to Ralph's unhappiness to know how little, in the whole affair, he was cutting the figure Mr. Dagonet expected him to cut.

And I...she..." Ralph's tongue was again too thick for his mouth.

Nevertheless, it was one of the facts about which she least liked to think when any chance allusion evoked Ralph's image.

She was sorry for this, for she could not imagine why any man should object to have Cicely Drane as a companion on a drive, unless his mind was entirely occupied by some other girl; and if Ralph's mind was thus occupied, it must be by Dora Bannister, and that did not please her.

" The more Ralph's mind dwelt upon the matter, the more dissatisfied did he feel that this beautiful young creature should marry the rector.

After the ceremony and breakfast, the young couple left Seaham for Sir Ralph's seat at Halnaby.

He did not think so ill of Sedley as to believe him capable of such a secret act of murder, and he had no great faith in Ralph's sagacity, besides that he thought his niece's nerves too much strained by the long suspense to be able to judge fairly.