dream, a dreadful dream!
Oh, Hugh!" and to the brother, scorned so often, poor 'Lina turned for
sympathy, while the stranger continued:

"It would be useless for me to say now that I loved her, Eliza, but I
did, and when I heard soon after my marriage that I was a father, I
said: 'Densie will never rest now until she finds me, and she must not
come between me and Eliza," so I feigned an excuse and left my new wife
for a few weeks. Eliza, you remember I said I had business in New York,
and so I had. I went to Densie Densmore. I professed sorrow for the
past. I made her believe me, and then laid a most diabolical plan. Money
will do anything, and I had more than people supposed. I had a mother,
too, at that time, a woman old and infirm, and good, even if I was her
son. To her I went with a tale, half false, half true. There was a
little child, I said, a little girl, whose mother was not my wife. I
would have made her so, I said, but she died at the child's birth. Would
my mother take that baby for my sake? She did not refuse, so I named a
day when I would bring it. 'Twas that day, Densie, when I took you to
the museum, and on pretense of a little business I must transact at a
house in Park Row, I left you for an hour, but never went back again."

"No, never back again--never. I waited so long, waited till I almost
thought I heard my baby cry, and then went home; but baby was gone.
Alice, do you hear me?--baby was gone;" and the poor, mumbling creature,
rocking to and fro, buried her bony fingers in Alice's fair hair.

"Poor Densie! poor auntie!" was all Alice said, as she regarded with
horror the man, who went on:

"Yes, baby was gone--gone to my mother's, in a part of the city where
there was no probability of its being found and I was gone, too. You are
shocked, fair maiden, and well you may be," the convict said.

"In course of time there was a daughter born to me and to Eliza; a sweet
little, brown-haired, brown-eyed girl, whom we named Adaline."

Instinctively every one in that room glanced at the black eyes and hair
of 'Lina, marveling at the change.

"I loved this little girl, as it was natural I should, more than I loved
the other, whose mother was a servant. Besides that, she was not so
deeply branded as the other; see--" and pushing back the thick locks
from his forehead, he disclosed his birthmark, while 'Lina suddenly put
her hand where she knew there was another like it.

"At last there came a separat