recollections that majestic form awoke in me--the massive features,
with the steadfast eye, and low, square brow, curled over with short
rings of hair; the mouth, that, through the thick, short beard, still
invited trust and reliance, even while there was a look of fire and
determination that inspired dread.

The thing seemed to us hideous and absurd when it was taken by Miss
Horsman. I hated it, and hid it away as a caricature. But now those
pale, vanishing tints bring the very presence before me; and before
the remembrance can become equally obscure in my own mind, let me
record for others the years that I spent with my young Alcides as he
now stands before me in memory.

Our family history is a strange one. I, Lucy Alison, never even saw
my twin brothers--nor, indeed, knew of their existence--during my
childhood. I had one brother a year younger than myself, and as long
as he lived he was treated as the eldest son, and neither he nor I
ever dreamed that my father had had a first wife and two sons. He
was a feeble, broken man, who seemed to my young fancy so old that in
after times it was always a shock to me to read on his tablet, "Percy
Alison, aged fifty-seven;" and I was but seven years old when he died
under the final blow of the loss of my little brother Percy from
measles.

The dear old place--house with five gables on the garden front, black
timbered, and with white plaster between, and oh! such flowers in the
garden--was left to my mother for her life; and she was a great deal
younger than my father, so we went on living there, and it was only
when I was almost a woman that I came to the knowledge that the
property would never be mine, but would go in the male line to the