ad grown much more serene in
their expression than in his earlier days, notwithstanding a cast of
suffering which his whole countenance exhibited. He was plainly, but
most carefully and respectably dressed; a diamond ring of great value
was on one of his fingers; the luster of the diamonds caught Mrs.
Lawson's glance on her first inspection of his person, and her heart
danced with rapture--Mrs. Thompson had no such ring, with all her
boasting of all her finery.

"I have come to see my child before I die," said the old man, gazing
on his son with earnest eyes; "you broke the ties of nature between
us on your part, when, ten years ago, you refused your father a few
shillings from your abundance, but--"

He was interrupted by Mrs. Lawson, who uttered many voluble
protestations of her deep grief at her having, even though for the
sake of economy, refused the money her dear father had solicited
before he left them. She vowed that she had neither ate, nor slept,
nor even dressed herself for weeks after his departure; and that,
sleeping or waking, she was perpetually wishing she had given him the
money, even though she had known that he was going to throw it into
the fire, or lose it in any way. Her poor, dear father--oh, she wept
so after she heard that he had left the country. To be sure, Henry
could tell how, for two or three nights, her pillow was soaked with
tears.

A cold, bitter smile again flitted across the old man's lips; he made
no response to her words, but in the one look which his hollow eyes
cast on her, he seemed to read the falsehood of her assertions.

"I was going to add," he said, "that though you forgot you were my
son, and refused to act as my son, when you withheld the paltry sum
for which I begged, yet I could not refrain from coming once more to
look on my child's face--to look on the face of my departed wife in
yours--for I know that a very brief period must finish my life now.
I should not have come here, I feel--I know it is the weakness of my
nature--I should have died amongst strangers, for the strangers
of other countries, the people of a different hue and a different
language, I have found kind and pitiful, compared with those of my
own house."

"Oh, don't say so--don't say so--you are our own beloved father; ah,
my heart clings to every feature of your poor, dear old face: there
are the eyes and all that I used to talk to Henry so much about. Don't
talk of strangers--I shall nurse you an