the miniature which I suppose you have found: the
chain to which it was suspended around my neck, had broken while I was
walking the street. I carefully wrapped it in paper and deposited it in
my purse, which I probably dropped on replacing it in my pocket, and did
not discover the loss until this morning. I immediately made diligent
search, but not finding it, I put up bills of advertisement. The
likeness was taken in my sister's happiest days. After I had entered
upon my professional studies in New-York, I became acquainted with a
miniature painter, who took my likeness. He afterwards went into the
country, and as I found he was to pass near my father's, I engaged him
to call there and take my sister's likeness also. We exchanged them soon
after. It was dear to me, even while the original remained; but since
she is gone it has become a most precious and valuable relique."

All the tender powers of Alonzo's soul were called into action by
Edgar's recital. The "days of other years"--the ghosts of sepulchered
blessings, passed in painful review. Added to these, the penurious
condition of his parents, his father's recent illness, and his probable
inability to procure the bread of his family, all tended more deeply to
sink his spirits in the gulf of melancholy and misery. He however
informed Edgar of all that had happened since they parted at
Vincent's--respecting the old mansion Melissa's extraordinary
disappearance therefrom, the manner in which he was informed of her
death, his departure from America, capture, escape, Beauman's death,
arrival in France, and his finding the miniature. To Edgar as well as
Alonzo, Melissa's sudden and unaccountable removal from the mansion was
mysterious and inexplicable.

As Edgar was to depart early the next morning, they neither slept nor
separated that night.

"If it were not for your reluctance to revisit your native country, said
Edgar, I should urge you to accompany me to Holland, and thence return
with me to America. Necessity and duty require that I should not be long
absent, as my parents want my assistance, and they are now childless."

"Suffer me, answered Alonzo, to bury myself in this city for the
present: should I ever again awake to real life, I will seek you out if
you are on the earth;--but now, I can only be a companion to my
miseries."

The next morning as they were about to depart, Alonzo took Melissa's
miniature from his bosom, contemplated the picture a few mom