, and, patting it almost as
complacently as she would have done the silky brown back of her pet
dog, gave Mrs Lyndsay the following passage from her history:--

"That boy, with the education I meant to bestow upon him, would have
become a great man--a second William Tell, or Andrew Hoffer--and I
should have been the foster-mother of a man of genius. But it was not to
be--there is a fate in these things."

"Did he die?" asked Flora.

"Die! that would have been nothing out of the common way; everybody must
die, some time or other. Oh, no, he may be living yet for what I
know--it was far worse than that."

Flora became interested.

"First--I like to begin at the beginning--I must tell you how I came by
Adolphe. I passed the summer of '28 in a small village among the Alps.
Every fine day I rambled among the mountains,--sometimes with a guide,
sometimes alone. About half a mile from the village I daily encountered,
upon the rocky road, a red-headed little boy of eight years of age, who
never failed to present me with a bunch of the blue flowers which grow
just below the regions of ice and snow. He presented his offering in
such a pretty, simple manner, that I never accepted his flowers without
giving him a kiss and a few small coins. We soon became great friends,
and he often accompanied me on my exploring expeditions. Whether it was
his red head--God bless the mark! or a likeness I fancied I saw between
him and me, I cannot tell; but at last I grew so fond of the child that
I determined to adopt him as my own. His father was one of the mountain
guides, and resided in a small cabin among the hills. I followed Adolphe
to his romantic home, and disclosed my wishes to his parents. They were
very poor people, with a very large family, Adolphe being number twelve
of the domestic group.

"For a long time they resisted all my entreaties to induce them to part
with the child. The woman, like the mother of the Gracchi, thought fit
to look upon her children as her jewels,--Adolphe, in particular, she
considered the gem in the maternal crown. Her opposition only increased
my desire to gain possession of the boy; indeed, I was so set upon
having him that, had she remained obstinate, I determined to carry him
off without asking her leave a second time. My gold, and the earnest
request of the child himself, at last overcame her scruples; and after
binding me by a solemn promise to let them see him at least once a-year,
she gave him