of his property (a less sum than that thus disposed of) was given to
little Elsie, with the exception of a small provision to crusty Hannah,
with the recommendation from the Doctor that she should retire and
spend the remainder of her life among her own people. There was
likewise a certain sum left for the purpose of editing and printing
(with a dedication to the Medical Society of the State) an account of
the process of distilling balm from cobwebs; the bequest being worded
in so singular a way that it was just as impossible as it had ever been
to discover whether the grim Doctor was in earnest or no.

What disappointed the boy, in a greater degree than we shall try to
express, was the lack of anything in reference to those dreams and
castles of the air,--any explanation of his birth; so that he was left
with no trace of it, except just so far as the alms-house whence the
Doctor had taken him. There all traces of his name and descent
vanished, just as if he had been made up of the air, as an aerolite
seems to be before it tumbles on the earth with its mysterious iron.

The poor boy, in his bewilderment, had not yet come to feel what his
grief was; it was not to be conceived, in a few days, that he was
deprived of every person, thing, or thought that had hitherto kept his
heart warm. He tried to make himself feel it, yearning for this grief
as for his sole friend. Being, for the present, domiciled with the
lawyer, he obtained the key of his former home, and went through the
desolate house that he knew so well, and which now had such a silent,
cold, familiar strangeness, with none in it, though the ghosts of the
grim Doctor, of laughing little Elsie, of crusty Hannah,--dead and
alive alike,--were all there, and his own ghost among them; for he
himself was dead, that is, his former self, which he recognized as
himself, had passed away, as they were. In the study everything looked