, the only child of his first marriage--had met him
at Plymouth, nursed him to convalescence, and brought him home to
Minden Cottage, to the garden which henceforward he tilled, but saw
only through memory. Since then she had married a young officer in
the 52nd Regiment, a Lieutenant Archibald Plinlimmon; but, her
husband having to depart at once for the Peninsula, she had remained
with her father and tended him as before, until death took her--as it
had taken her mother--in childbirth. The babe did not survive her;
and, to complete the sad story, her husband fell a few weeks later
before Badajoz, while assaulting the Picurina Gate with fifty axemen
of the Light Division.

Beneath these blows of fate my father did indeed bow his head, yet
bravely. From the day Isabel died his shoulders took a sensible
stoop; but this was the sole evidence of the mortal wound he carried,
unless you count that from the same day he put aside his "Aeneid,"
and taught me no more from it, but spent his hours for the most part
in meditation, often with a Bible open on his knee--although his eyes
could not read it. Sally, our cook, told me one day that when the
foolish midwife came and laid the child in his arms, not telling him
that it was dead, he felt it over and broke forth in a terrible cry--
his first and last protest.

In me--the only child of his second marriage, as Isabel had been the
only child of his first--he appeared to have lost, and of a sudden,
all interest. While Isabel lived there had been reason for this, or
excuse at least, for he had loved her mother passionately, whereas
from mine he had separated within a day or two after marriage, having
married her only because he was obliged--or conceived himself
obliged--by honour. Into this story I shall not go. It was a sad
one, and, strange to say, sadly creditable to both. I do not
remember my mother. She died, having taken some pains to hide even
my existence from her husband, who, nevertheless, conscientiously
took up the burden. A man more strongly conscientious never lived;
and his sudden neglect of me had nothing to do with caprice, but
came--as I am now assured--of some lesion of memory under the shock
of my sister's death. As an unregenerate youngster I thought little
of it at the time, beyond rejoicing to be free of my daily lesson in
Virgil.

I can see my father now, seated within the summer-house by the
filbert-tree at the end of the orchard--his favourite