n replied laughing, "If the lad be in want of money, he will
the sooner get acquainted with the real world; and if he have not said
which way he is going, still he knows where his letters will find us."

It has always remained unknown which way his journey really was
directed; some maintain that he had been to the distant Indies; others
declare that he had only fancied it; thus much, however, is certain, he
must have travelled a great way, for it was not in a year's time, as he
had promised his parents, but after the lapse of full three years, that
Peregrine returned to Frankfort on foot, and in a tolerably poor
condition.

He found his father's mansion fast shut up and no one stirred within,
let him ring and knock as much as he would. At last there came by a
neighbour from 'Change, of whom he immediately inquired whether Mr.
Tyss had gone abroad? At this question the neighbour started back,
terrified, and cried, "Mr. Peregrine Tyss! Is it you? Are you come at
last? Don't you then know it?"

Enough,--Peregrine learnt that, during his absence, both parents had
died, one after the other; that the authorities had taken possession of
the inheritance, and had publicly summoned him, whose abode was
altogether unknown, to return to Frankfort and receive the property of
his father.

Peregrine continued to stand before his neighbour without the power of
utterance. For the first time the pain of life crossed his heart, and
he saw in ruins the beautiful bright world wherein, till now, he had
dwelt with so much delight. The neighbour soon perceived that he was
utterly incapable of setting about the least thing that the occasion
called for; he therefore took him to his own house, and himself
arranged every thing with all possible expedition, so that, on the very
same evening, Peregrine found himself in his paternal mansion.

Exhausted, overwhelmed by a feeling of disconsolation such as he had
not yet known, he sank into his father's great arm-chair, which was
still standing in its usual place, when a voice said, "It is well that
you have returned, dear Mr. Peregrine; ah, if you had but come sooner!"

Peregrine looked up and saw close before him the old woman, whom his
father had taken into his service chiefly because she could get no
other place, on account of her outrageous ugliness: she had been
Peregrine's nurse in his early childhood, and had not left the house
since. For a long time he stared at the woman, and at last beg