I told my father the history of my youth and womanhood, of my marriage and widowhood, with feelings similar to those with which I poured out my soul into the compassionate bosom of my Heavenly Father. He listened, pitied, wept over, and then consoled me.

"He must prove himself worthy of so sacred a trust," said he, clasping me to his bosom with all a father's tenderness, and all a mother's love, "before I ever commit it to his keeping. Never again, with my consent, shall you be given back to his arms, till 'the seed of the woman has bruised the serpent's head.'"

"I will never leave you again, dear father, under any circumstances, whatever they may be. Rest assured, that come weal, come woe, we will never be separated. Not even for a husband's unclouded confidence, would I forsake a father's sacred, new-found love."

"We must wait, and hope, and trust, my beloved daughter. Every thing will work together for the good of those that love God. I believe that now, fully, reverentially. Sooner or later all the ways of Providence will be justified to man, and made clear as the noonday sun."

He looked up to heaven, and his fine countenance beamed with holy resignation and Christian faith. Oh! how I loved this dear, excellent, noble father! Every hour, nay, every moment I might say, my filial love and reverence increased. My feelings were so new, so overpowering, I could not analyze them. They were sweet as the strains of Edith's harp, yet grand as the roaring of ocean's swelling waves. The bliss of confidence, the rapture of repose, the sublimity of veneration, the tenderness of love, all blended like the dyes of the rainbow, and spanned with an arch of peace the retreating clouds of my soul.

"When shall we go to Grandison Place?" he asked. "I long to pour a father's gratitude into the ear of your benefactress. I long to visit the grave of my Rosalie."

"To-morrow, to-day,—now, dear father, whenever you speak the word; provided we are not separated, I do not mind how soon."

He smiled at my eagerness.

"Not quite so much haste, my daughter. I cannot leave to Richard the sole task of ministering to the soul of my unhappy brother. His conscience is quickened, his feeling softened, and it may be that the day of grace is begun. His frame is weak and worn, his blood feverish, and drop by drop is slowly drying in his veins. I never saw any one so fearfully altered. Truly is it said, that 'the wages of sin is death.' Oh! if after herding with the swine and feeding on the husks of earth, he comes a repentant prodigal to his father's home, it matters not how soon he passes from that living tomb."

My father's words were prophetic. The prisoner's wasted frame was consuming slowly, almost imperceptibly, like steel when rust corrodes it. Richard and my father were with him every day, and gathered round him every comfort which the law permitted, to soften the horrors of imprisonment. Not in vain were their labors of love. God blessed them. The rock was blasted. The waters gushed forth. Like the thief on the cross, he turned his dying glance on his Saviour, and acknowledged him to be the Son of God. But it was long before the fiery serpents of remorse were deadened by the sight of the brazen reptile, glittering with supernatural radiance on the uplifted eye of faith. The struggle was fearful and agonizing, but the victory triumphant.

Had he needed me, I would have gone to him, and I often pleaded earnestly with my father to take me with him; but he said he did not wish me to be exposed to such harrowing scenes, and that Richard combined the tenderness of a daughter with the devotion of a son. Poor Richard! his pale cheeks and heavy eyes bore witness to the protracted sufferings of his father, but he bore up bravely, sustained by the hope of his soul's emancipation from the bondage of sin.

The prisoner must have had an iron constitution. The wings of his spirit flapped with such violence against its skeleton bars, the vulture-beak of remorse dipping all the time into the quivering, bleeding heart, it is astonishing how long it resisted even after flesh and blood seemed wasted away. Day after day he lingered; but as his soul gradually unsheathed itself, clearer views of God and eternity played upon its surface, till it flashed and burned, like a sword in the sunbeams of heaven.

At length he died, with the hand of his son clasped in his, the bible of TherÉsa laid against his heart, and his brother kneeling in prayer by his bedside. Death came softly, gently, like an angel of release, and left the seal of peace on that brow, indented in life by the thunder-scars of sin and crime.

After the first shock, Richard could not help feeling his father's death an unspeakable blessing, accompanied by such circumstances. In the grave his transgressions would be forgotten, or remembered only to forgive. He must now rise, shake off the sackcloth and ashes from his spirit, and put on the beautiful garments of true manhood. The friends, who had taken such an interest in his education, must not be disappointed in the career they had marked out. Arrangements had been made for him to study his profession with one of the most eminent lawyers of Boston, and he was anxious to commence immediately, that he might find in mental excitement an antidote to morbid sensibility and harrowing memory.

My father's wishes and my own turned to Grandison Place, and we prepared at once for our departure. I had informed Mrs. Linwood by letters of the events which I have related, and received her heart-felt congratulations. She expressed an earnest desire to see my father, but honored too much the motives that induced him to remain, to wish him to hasten. Now those motives no longer existed, I wrote to announce our coming, and soon after we bade adieu to one of the most charming abodes of goodness, hospitality, and pure domestic happiness I have ever known.

"You must write and tell me of all the changes of your changing destiny," said Mrs. Brahan, when she gave me the parting embrace; "no one can feel more deeply interested in them than myself. I feel in a measure associated with the scenes of your life-drama, for this is the place of your nativity, and it was under this roof you were united to your noble and inestimable father. Be of good cheer. Good news will come, wafted from beyond the Indian seas, and your second bridal morn will be fairer than the first."

I thanked her with an overflowing heart. I did not, like her, see the day-star of hope arising over that second bridal morn, but the sweet pathetic minor tone breathed in my ear the same holy strain:—