ng with harvests, and
brightened with the glowing tints of autumn; again the sluggish brigs
drifting down with the tide, and sailors in tasselled caps leaning over
the bulwarks; again the flocks feeding leisurely on the rock-strewn
hills; again the ferryman, in his broad, cumbrous scow, oaring across;
again the stoppage at the wharf of the little town, from which the coach
still plies over the hills to Ashfield.

On the way thither, a carriage passes them, in which are Adele and her
father. The news of disaster flies fast; they have learned of the wreck,
and the names of passengers. They go to learn what they can of the
mother, whom the daughter has scarce known. The passing is too hasty for
recognition. Brindlock arrives at last with his helpless charge at the
door of the parsonage. The Doctor is overwhelmed at once with grief and
with joy. The news had come to him, and he had anticipated the worst.
But "Thank God! 'Joseph, my son, is yet alive!' Still a probationer;
there is yet hope that he may be brought into the fold."

He insists that he shall be placed below, upon his own bed, just out of
his study. For himself, he shall need none until the crisis is past. But
the crisis does not pass; it is hard to say when it will. The wounds are
not so much; but a low fever has set in, (the physician says,) owing to
exposure and excitement, and he can predict nothing as to the result.
Even Aunt Eliza is warmed into unwonted attention as she sees that poor
battered hulk of humanity lying there; she spares herself no fatigue,
God knows, but she sheds tears in her own chamber over this great
disaster. There are good points even in the spinster; when shall we
learn that the best of us are not wholly good, nor the worst wholly bad?

Days and days pass. Reuben hovering between life and death; and the old
Doctor, catching chance rest upon the little cot they have placed for
him in the study, looks yearningly by the dim light of the sick-lamp
upon that dove which his lost Rachel had hung upon his wall above the
sword of his father. He fancies that the face of Reuben, pinched with
suffering, resembles more than ever the mother. Of sickness, or of the
little offices of friends which cheat it of pains, the old gentleman
knows nothing: sick souls only have been his care. And it is pitiful to
see his blundering, eager efforts to do something, as he totters round
the sick-chamber where Reuben, with very much of youthful vigor left in
him,