u see what I am coming at, Edgar?" he added, pausing
in his discourse, and directing his gaze toward the boy, who sat
listening attentively to his uncle's words.

"No, Uncle Ralph," answered the lad; "I don't know as I do, unless you
are going to send me away from you to some distant school;" and his voice
trembled as he spoke.

"Would you dislike to leave me, my boy?" said the hermit, a tear dropping
from his melancholy eye.

"Ah, that would I!" returned Edgar, "for I have none to care for me in
the wide world, save you."

"Pshaw, pshaw, boy! don't prate in that way, with your bright, curly
locks," said the man, laying his thin hand softly on the youth's light,
clustering hair. "When these locks are gray, and you have toiled and
labored for fame and honors never gained, or that burned and furrowed the
brow that wore them; when you have engaged in the world's weary strife
and sunk by the wayside worn and disheartened by the contest; when
friends have proved false;"--here the hermit's voice grew deeper and more
vehement--"and when those who professed for you the fondest love turn
coldly away to mock and scorn at your deep devotion, then, then, my boy,
you will exclaim in bitterness, 'there are none to care for me!'"

He paused, and bowed his face on his hands. Edgar longed to comfort him,
but knew not what to say.

The night wind roared solemnly without, the fire burned low on the rude
hearth, and the little apartment, but illy protected from the searching
blasts, grew chilly. Still the hermit sat silent, his bowed head resting
between his small, attenuated hands. Edgar rose, brought the long
overcoat and spread it over his shoulders, as a protection from the
increasing cold. Then wrapping a blanket around his own light form, he
stole softly to the window, and turned his gaze upward to the
star-lighted heaven. He dearly loved to sit thus through the hushed
midnight hours, and listen to the deep, heavy roaring of the mighty
winds, as they swept through the surrounding forest, while his soul
seemed borne away on their rushing currents, up and upward till her
pinions brushed the starry palaces of angels and beatified spirits; and
on, and on, with new splendors ever bursting on her ravished vision, till
the elysium of light in the high heaven of heavens poured its bewildering
glories upon her, and her weary wings fluttered to rest at last upon the
bosom of the All-Holy.

Edgar was possessed of a temperament of the mo