and wrote on the canvas--


"GONE INTO TRADE."


He sent for his attorney, made a new will, and bequeathed his land,
houses, goods, and chattels, to Dissolute Dick and his heirs forever.




CHAPTER III.


The sorrowful widow was so fond of her little Henry, and the uncertainty
of life was so burnt into her now, that she could hardly bear him out of
her sight. Yet her love was of the true maternal stamp; not childish and
self-indulgent. She kept him from school, for fear he should be brought
home dead to her; but she gave her own mind with zeal to educate him.
Nor was she unqualified. If she had less learning than school-masters,
she knew better how to communicate what she did know to a budding mind.
She taught him to read fluently, and to write beautifully; and she
coaxed him, as only a woman can, over the dry elements of music and
arithmetic. She also taught him dancing and deportment, and to sew on
a button. He was a quick boy at nearly everything, but, when he was
fourteen, his true genius went ahead of his mere talents; he showed
a heaven-born gift for--carving in wood. This pleased Joseph Little
hugely, and he fostered it judiciously.