tually consigned, not only to
hardships and to disdain, but even to desolating doubts, and distrust of
themselves.

"Then it is agreed that you will go, to-morrow morning to this young
lady's house?" exclaimed Mother Bunch, trembling with a new-born hope.
"And," she quickly added, "at break of day I'll go down to watch at the
street-door, to see if there be anything suspicious, and to apprise you
of what I perceive."

"Good, excellent girl!" exclaimed Agricola, with increasing emotion.

"It will be necessary to endeavor to set off before the wakening of
your father," said the hunchback. "The quarter in which the young lady
dwells, is so deserted, that the mere going there will almost serve for
your present concealment."

"I think I hear the voice of my father," said Agricola suddenly.

In truth, the little apartment was so near Agricola's garret, that he
and the sempstress, listening, heard Dagobert say in the dark:

"Agricola, is it thus that you sleep, my boy? Why, my first sleep is
over; and my tongue itches deucedly."

"Go quick, Agricola!" said Mother Bunch; "your absence would disquiet
him. On no account go out to-morrow morning, before I inform you whether
or not I shall have seen anything suspicious."

"Why, Agricola, you are not here?" resumed Dagobert, in a louder voice.

"Here I am, father," said the smith, while going out of the sempstress's
apartment, and entering the garret, to his father.

"I have been to fasten the shutter of a loft that the wind agitated,
lest its noise should disturb you."

"Thanks, my boy; but it is not noise that wakes me," said Dagobert,
gayly; "it is an appetite, quite furious, for a chat with you. Oh, my
dear boy, it is the hungering of a proud old man of a father, who has
not seen his son for eighteen years."

"Shall I light a candle, father?"

"No, no; that would be luxurious; let us chat in the dark. It will be a
new pleasure for me to see you to-morrow morning at daybreak. It will be
like seeing you for the first time twice." The door of Agricola's garret
being now closed, Mother Bunch heard nothing more.

The poor girl, without undressing, threw herself upon the bed, and
closed not an eye during the night, painfully awaiting the appearance of
day, in order that she might watch over the safety of Agricola. However,
in spite of her vivid anxieties for the morrow, she sometimes allowed
herself to sink into the reveries of a bitter melancholy. She compared
the co