interruption, to our old intimate companionship The end was
coming, however, when we least expected it. My mother was
startled, one morning, by a letter from my father, which informed
her that he had been unexpectedly obliged to sail for England at
a moment's notice; that he had arrived in London, and that he was
detained there by business which would admit of no delay. We were
to wait for him at home, in daily expectation of seeing him the
moment he was free.

This news filled my mother's mind with foreboding doubts of the
stability of her husband's grand speculation in America. The
sudden departure from the United States, and the mysterious delay
in London, were ominous, to her eyes, of misfortune to come. I am
now writing of those dark days in the past, when the railway and
the electric telegraph were still visions in the minds of
inventors. Rapid communication with my father (even if he would
have consented to take us into his confidence) was impossible. We
had no choice but to wait and hope.

The weary days passed; and still my father's brief letters
described him as detained by his business. The morning came when
Mary and I went out with Dermody, the bailiff, to see the last
wild fowl of the season lured into the decoy; and still the
welcome home waited for the master, and waited in vain.

CHAPTER III.

SWEDENBORG AND THE SIBYL.

MY narrative may move on again from the point at which it paused