'Well; he and I were schoolmates.'

'He died some few years after you went on that voyage from which no one
ever expected to see you return--I for one. Though remembering your
daring courage and hardihood, I did not credit the tale that was brought
here that you had perished in the woods attempting to escape. I felt
confident you would one day return--as you did ten years ago, and
brought this boy with you. Geoffry Hunter left two children. You knew
them--Horace and Ellen. Poor Ellen! victim of a titled villain!' and the
good woman paused, and tears filled her eyes. It was some moments ere
she could proceed. 'Horace grew up a fine young-man. As a boy he was a
playmate of our proud master; and when Ellen returned from Canterbury,
where she had been educated by an aunt, she was the pride of the
village, the joy of her widowed mother's heart, and the apple of her
brother's eye. It was a beautiful thing to see, Walter, the strong love
of those two--the exultant pride of the brother in his sister's
loveliness--in her accomplishments, for she knew many things our country
folks were unacquainted with. The deep affection of the sister--oh, it
was a happy and a handsome picture, that mother, sister and brother. She
took more pleasure in the society of your daughter than in any other of
the village girls, and they were much together. Ellen taught her what
she had learned, and thus it came about that her brother first noticed
and finally loved her. And she loved him in return. A handsomer or more
fitting pair never trod the sod together. You would have approved the
match. Your father gave his consent--he had long mourned you as
dead--and they were to have been married when she became 20 years of
age. It yet wanted two years of this time when our lord returned from
abroad. He soon visited the house of his old playfellow, and was struck
with the beauty of Ellen Hunter--but he too well knew the character of