his usual modest and gentle dignity; and assuring me that he looked
forward with great interest to a residence in lands new to his experience,
and affording ample scope for the hardy enjoyments which had always most
allured his tastes, he hastened to change the subject.

"And who, think you, is the admirable helpmate my scape-grace has had the
saving good luck to find? A daughter of the worthy man who undertook the
care of poor Dr. Lloyd's orphans,--the orphans who owed so much to your
generous exertions to secure a provision for them; and that child, now
just risen from her father's grave, is my pet companion, my darling ewe
lamb,--Dr. Lloyd's daughter Amy."

Here the child joined us, quickening her pace as she recognized the old
man, and nestling to his side as she glanced wistfully towards myself. A
winning, candid, lovable child's face, somewhat melancholy, somewhat more
thoughtful than is common to the face of childhood, but calm, intelligent,
and ineffably mild. Presently she stole from the old man, and put her
hand in mine.

"Are you not the kind gentleman who came to see him that night when he
passed away from us, and who, they all say at home, was so good to my
brothers and me? Yes, I recollect you now." And she put her pure face to
mine, wooing me to kiss it.

I kind! I good! I--I! Alas! she little knew, little guessed, the
wrathful imprecation her father had bequeathed to me that fatal night!

I did not dare to kiss Dr. Lloyd's orphan daughter, but my tears fell over
her hand. She took them as signs of pity, and, in her infant
thankfulness, silently kissed me.