So stood the feelings of the young man, when,
one day after dinner, the Doctor snuffing the
candle, and taking from his pouch the great leathern
pocketbook in which be deposited particular papers,
with a small supply of the most necessary
and active medicines, he took from it Mr Mon
ada's
letter, and requested Richard Middlemas's
serious attention, while he told him some circumstances
concerning himself, which it greatly imported
him to know. Richard's dark eyes flashed
fire---the blood flushed his broad and well-formed
forehead---the hour of explanation was at length
come. He listened to the narrative of Gideon
Gray, which, the reader may believe, being altogether
divested of the gilding which Nurse Jamieson's
imagination had bestowed upon it, and reduced
to what mercantile men termed the _needful_,
exhibited little more than the tale of a child of
shame, deserted by its father and mother, and
brought up on the reluctant charity of a more
distant relation, who regarded him as the living
though unconscious evidence of the disgrace of his
family, and would more willingly have paid for
the expenses of his funeral, than that of the food
which was grudgingly provided for him.
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