'No, you would be too young to remember it; you were only three years
old when your father left London for a parish in the country, and soon
after came the news of his death, and only a year or so later we heard
your mother was gone too. It was a sorrowful day, Jack, when that news
came.

'We often wondered about you; we heard that you had gone to live with an
aunt, but we did not even know her name. We tried to find out more, but
we knew no one in the place where you lived, and we never heard what had
become of you.'

'How strange that I should have been brought here to meet you!' I said.

'No, not strange,' he said reverently; 'it is the hand of God.'

And then--I could not help it--I laid my head on my arm as I stood
against the mantel-piece, and I sobbed like a child.

He did not speak for some minutes, and then he put his arm round me as
tenderly as my mother could have done, and said, 'What is it, Jack? Is
it talking of your mother that has upset you so?'

'No,' I said, 'it isn't that--I love to talk of her; I love to hear of
her; everything she said is precious to me; it isn't that.'

'What then?' he said; 'what troubles you, Jack?'

'It's the thought that I shall never see her again,' I said; 'I know I
shall not. _She_ went one way and _I_ am going another.'