my thoughts were turned from that silent figure, too absorbed in my own
restless tumult of doubt and dread, for sympathy with the grief or the
consolation of a kneeling child. And yet I should have remembered that
tomb! Again I murmured with a fierce impatience, "Oh, for a friend! oh,
for a guide!"

I heard steps on the walk under the yews; and an old man came in sight,
slightly bent, with long gray hair, but still with enough of vigour for
years to come, in his tread, firm, though slow, in the unshrunken muscle
of his limbs and the steady light of his clear blue eye. I started. Was
it possible? That countenance, marked, indeed, with the lines of
laborious thought, but sweet in the mildness of humanity, and serene in
the peace of conscience! I could not be mistaken. Julius Faber was
before me,--the profound pathologist, to whom my own proud self-esteem
acknowledged inferiority, without humiliation; the generous benefactor to
whom I owed my own smooth entrance into the arduous road of fame and
fortune. I had longed for a friend, a guide; what I sought stood suddenly
at my side.




CHAPTER XLV.

Explanation on Faber's part was short and simple. The nephew whom he
designed as the heir to his wealth had largely outstripped the liberal
allowance made to him, had incurred heavy debts; and in order to extricate
himself from the debts, had plunged into ruinous speculations. Faber had
come back to England to save his heir from prison or outlawry, at the
expense of more than three-fourths of the destined inheritance. To add to