"
The man started up in bed, resting on his elbow. "How did you know all
this?" asked he. "Who has told you this? Who are you?"
The exertion and the rapid speaking brought on another fit of coughing
and he fell back on his pillow.
"If what I have said is true," remarked Quincy quietly, "your brother,
Nathaniel, is my father, and I am your nephew, Quincy Adams Sawyer."
"Who sent you to see me?" asked the man.
"I heard," replied Quincy, "that a man named James Sawyer was in the
Eastborough Poorhouse. I wrote to my father, and in his reply he told me
what I have just said to you. If you are my uncle, father says to do
everything I can to help you, and if he had not said so I would have
done it anyway."
"It is all true," said the man faintly. "I squandered the money my
father left me. I married a sweet, young girl and took her to the city.
I tried to introduce her into the set to which I once belonged. It was a
failure. I was angry, not with myself for expecting too much, but with
her because she gave me too little, as I then thought. We had two
children--a boy named Ray and a little girl named Mary, after my
mother.
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