"Oh, my friend!" I murmured to Faber, "I have much that I yearn to say to
you--alone--alone! Come to my house with me, be at least my guest as long
as you stay in this town."

"Willingly," said Faber, looking at me more intently than he had done
before, and with the true eye of the practised Healer, at once soft and
penetrating.

He rose, took my arm, and whispering a word in the ear of the little girl,
she went on before us, turning her head, as she gained the gate, for
another look at her father's grave. As we walked to my house, Julius
Faber spoke to me much of this child. Her brothers were all at school;
she was greatly attached to his nephew's wife; she had become yet more
attached to Faber himself, though on so short an acquaintance; it bad been
settled that she was to accompany the emigrants to Australia.

"There," said he, "the sum, that some munificent, but unknown friend of
her father has settled on her, will provide her no mean dower for a
colonist's wife, when the time comes for her to bring a blessing to some
other hearth than ours." He went on to say that she had wished to
accompany him to L----, in order to visit her father's grave before
crossing the wide seas; "and she has taken such fond care of me all the
way, that you might fancy I were the child of the two. I come back to
this town, partly to dispose of a few poor houses in it which still belong
to me, principally to bid you farewell before quitting the Old World, no
doubt forever. So, on arriving to-day, I left Amy by herself in the
churchyard while I went to your house, but you were from home. And now I
must congratulate you on the reputation you have so rapidly acquired,
which has even surpassed my predictions."