10 The Home of the Wolverene and Beaver. 



reader a little regarding the two lads thus abruptly 

 introduced, with one of whom this story is mainly 

 concerned. 



Mr. Robert Gresham, the father of Paul, was a 

 large West Indian proprietor, having inherited 

 sugar plantations and a coffee estate in Demerara 

 from a distant cousin, of whose existence he was 

 almost unaware. His early life had been a fierce 

 struggle with poverty, an actual fight for the bare 

 necessaries of life, under the burthen of which he 

 had seen his young wife pass away, leaving him 

 alone to face the bitter world with a baby only a 

 few weeks old. The winter that witnessed her 

 departure had barely brightened into spring, and 

 the grass was not yet green upon her grave when 

 the intelligence of his cousin's death reached him, 

 and he found himself suddenly lifted from penury 

 to the enjoyment of a large fortune. But though 

 wealth came to the widower, the power to enjoy it 

 was wanting. What would not one hundredth part 

 of the sum, now yearly his, have been to him in the 

 days not long since past t It would have brought 

 health and bloom to the fair check that poverty com- 

 pelled him to watch growing daily more wan and 

 pale, beneath the pinching fingers of want ; it would 

 have brought peace to the aching heart, and proper 

 nourishment to the feeble frame. It was not to 



