ficiently clear lineage to be
united with the Squire's family,--or perhaps because he had a sister,
five years older than himself, who fulfilled the duties of companion and
housekeeper.

How strange a sensation it is to feel a real friendship and familiarity
with one we have never seen! Yet if people are drawn together by those
mysterious affinities which, like the daughters of the horse-leech, are
ever crying, "Give, give," a few bits of paper bridge over space well
enough, and enable us to recognize abroad the scattered fragments that
complete ourselves.

The Colonel studied up my ancestors, who, it appears, were once people
of sufficient consideration in the land, and finally transferred the
interest to myself. At one time he took the trouble to go down to
Branton, about forty miles from Foxden, for the purpose of verifying
inquiries about progenitors of mine who had originally settled in that
place. He advised me, as a son, in my reading and business; and although
I often dismissed his suggestions as the whims of an old-fashioned
recluse, I was always touched by the simplicity and sincere interest
that prompted them. He would mysteriously hint that something might one
day occur to give tangible proof of the regard in which he held me; but
as I paid little heed to such warnings, I was totally unprepared for the
plan developed in the letter of which an extract is here presented:--

"Concerning the propriety of your marrying, my dear young friend, my
sister and myself have long known but one opinion; the only difficulty
that has exercised us being, whom, among my divers correspondents, we
could most heartily commend to your selection. Now it is known to you
that I have striven for some time past to trace the descendants of the
old family of Hurribattel, who seem to have disappeared from Branton
about the year ten in the present century. The interest I have taken in
the research comes from the fact that your great-great-uncle appears
at one time to have been affianced to a lady of that family. For what
reason an alliance which had everything to recommend it was broken off
I have sorely puzzled myself to conjecture, but linger always in the
labyrinths of doubt. Some months ago I received a catalogue from the
Soggimarsh College in the Far West, to whose funds I had contributed a
modest subscription. I was thrown into an ecstasy of astonishment, when,
in glancing over the names of the honorable Faculty, my attention was