y, very miserable."

Guly saw a tear sparkle, and trickle down through the wrinkles of that
aged face, and his own heart yearned sorrowfully.

"Blanche will never be without friends," said Wilkins, encouragingly.
"At least she will never lack for one while I live."

"Or I," exclaimed Guly, earnestly.

The old man shook his head, and smiled sadly.

"Two young men, however worthy and noble they may be, are not exactly
the ones to offer their protection to an orphaned and beautiful girl.
Such things I don't doubt may be done uprightly and honestly; but the
world, the suspicious world, is ever ready to cast the blight of shame
and slander on such things."

Blanche suddenly left her grandfather's chair and hurried away to a
distant corner of the room, from whence she brought a little stand
containing a work-basket and the lamp. She placed it just in front of
her grandpapa's chair, and between Guly and Wilkins. With a smile she
seated herself at it, and began to embroider a strip of insertion;
nimbly plying her needle among the slender vines and tendrils she was
working.

"Are you there, darling?" said the old man, stretching out his unsteady
hand and laying it on her head.

"Yes, grandpapa, right here in my old place."

He withdrew his hand with an air of pleased satisfaction, and resumed
the subject he had just dropped.

"Blanche needs a mother--some female friend to guard and protect her,
when--when her old grandfather shall be gone. I am afraid I shall drop
off suddenly one of these days; I have sudden turns of illness which are
very severe. I was quite sick last night--ah, she told me of your
kindness to her, Mr. Wilkins; God be praised--and I could not help
feeling then that my thoughts turned more upon my poor desolate child
here, than on that other world to which I might be hastening."

Blanche dropped her head lower and lower over her work, till her short
glossy ringlets shaded her soft brown eyes.

"This world," continued he, with that love of pursuing the prominent
subject of thought so common with aged persons, "has, of course, lost
its fascination for me. I am blind, and very old; and am swiftly
descending from the summit of life's mount, and must soon drop from its
base into that vast eternity of which we know so little. Poor Blanche! I
am of course a trouble, so helpless and blind, but she will miss me when
she's left alone. Poor child, poor child!"

Blanche lifted up her head quickly, and showe