ly so firmly compressed, was quivering with
emotion, and those stern eyes were full of tears. She advanced to him,
drew near, and resting her head upon his shoulder whispered, "I, too, am
a woman needing tenderness--shut not your heart against me, my son, for
without you I am alone in the world."

The proud spirit had bent, the sealed fountain was opened, and as he
clasped his arms around her, the tears of mother and son mingled; but
amidst the joy of this reunion Edward Houstoun felt more deeply than he
had done for long months the desolation that had fallen on his life. His
heart had been silent--it now spoke again, and sad were its tones.

It is summer. The courts are closed, and all who can are escaping from
the city's heat to the cool, refreshing shades of the country. Woe to
those who remain! The pestilence has stretched her wings over them. The
shadow and the silence of death has fallen on their deserted streets.
The yellow-fever is in New-York--introduced, it is said, by ships from
the West Indies. Before it appeared Edward Houstoun was far away. He was
travelling to recruit his exhausted powers--to Niagara, perhaps into
Canada, and in the then slow progress of news he was little likely to be
recalled by any intelligence from the city. His mother was one of the
first who had sickened. And where were now the fair forms that had
encircled her in health--where the servants who had administered with
obsequious attention to her lightest wish? All had fled, for no
gratified vanity--no low cupidity can give courage for attendance on the
bed of one in whose breath death is supposed to lurk. The devotedness of
love, the self-sacrifice of Christian Charity, are the only impulses for
such a deed. Yet over the sufferer is bending one whose form in its
perfect development has richly fulfilled its early promise, and whose
face is more beautiful in the gentle strength and thoughtfulness of
womanhood than it had been in all its early brightness. In her peaceful
home, where the reverent love of her young pupils and the confidence of
their parents had made her happy, Lucy had heard from one of Lady
Houstoun's terrified domestics of the condition in which she had been
left, and few hours sufficed to bring her to her side. Days and nights
of the most assiduous watchfulness, cheered by no companionship,
followed, and then the physician, as he stood beside his patient and
marked her regular breathing, her placid sleep, and the moistu