the clipped yew-trees that bordered the path
from the entrance to the church porch; deeming
vaguely that my own perplexing thoughts might
imbibe a quiet from the quiet of the place.

"And oh, " I murmured to myself, " oh that
I had one bosom friend to whom I might freely
confide all these torturing riddles which I cannot
solve—one who could read my heart, assured of
its truthfulness, and wise enough to enlighten
its troubles."

And as I so murmured, my eye fell upon the
form of a kneeling child;—at the farthest end of
the burial-ground, beside a grave with its new
headstone gleaming white amidst the older moss-
grown tombs, a female child, her head bowed,
her hands clasped. I could see but the outline
of her small form in its sable dress—an infant
beside the dead.

My eye and 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 bosom friend in whom I
could confide!"

I heard steps on the walks under the yews.
And an old man came in sight, slightly bent,
with long grey 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 smoothed entrance into the
arduous road of fame and fortune. I had
longed for a friend, a confidant; what I sought
stood suddenly at my side.

CHAPTER XLV.

EXPLANATION, on his 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 all, the young man had
married a young lady without fortune; the
uncle only heard of this marriage on arriving in
England. The spendthrift was hiding from his
creditors in the house of his father-in-law, in one
of the western counties. Faber there sought
him; and, on becoming acquainted with his
wife, grew reconciled to the marriage, and
formed hopes of his nephew's future redemption.
He spoke, indeed, of the young wife with great
affection. She was good and sensible; willing
and anxious to encounter any privation by which
her husband might retrieve the effects of his
folly. " So," said Faber, " on consultation with
this excellent creature—for my poor nephew is
so broken down by repentance, that others must
think for him how to exalt repentance into reform—
my plans were determined. I shall remove
my prodigal from all scenes of temptation. He
has youth, strength, plenty of energy, hitherto
misdirected. I shall take him from the Old
World into the New. I have decided on Australia.
The fortune still left to me, small here,
will be ample capital there. It is not enough
to maintain us separately, so we must all live
together. Besides, I feel that, though I have
neither the strength nor the experience which
could best serve a young settler on a strange
soil, still, under my eye, my poor boy will be at
once more prudent and more persevering. We
sail next week."

Faber spoke so cheerfully that I knew not
how to express compassion; yet, at his age, after
a career of such prolonged and distinguished
labour, to resign the ease and comforts of the
civilised state tor the hardships and rudeness of
an infant colony, seemed to me a dreary prospect;
and, as delicately, as tenderly as I could
to one whom I loved and honoured as a father, I
placed at his disposal the fortune which, in great
part, I owed to him,—pressing him at least to
take from it enough to secure to himself, in his
own country, a home suited to his years and
worthy of his station. He rejected all my
offers, however earnestly urged on him, with 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 scapegrace 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 recognised 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!