hing."

"But you read it, father!" said Richard, anxiously. "You cannot fail to
find light and comfort in it. You cannot be altogether lonely with such
a companion."

"What is the use of reading what one cannot understand?" cried he, in a
gloomy tone. "Your mother was a Catholic. She did not read the Bible,
and if there is a heaven above, it was made for such as she."

"My mother _did_ read her Bible," answered Richard, with solemnity. "She
taught me to read it, making a table of her knees, while her hands
toiled for our subsistence. It was a lamp to her path, a balm to her
sorrows. She lived according to its precepts. She died, believing in its
promises."

The glistening eyes of Richard seemed to magnetize his father, so
earnest, so steadfast was his gaze.

"Have you _her_ Bible?" he asked, in a husky voice.

"I have; it was her dying gift."

"Bring it, and read to me the chapters she loved best. Perhaps--who
knows? Great God! I was once a praying child at my mother's knee."

Richard grasped his father's hand with a strong emotion,

"I will bring it, father. We will read it together, and her spirit will
breathe into our hearts. The pages are marked by her pencil, blistered
by her tears."

"Yes, bring it!" he repeated. "Who knows? Just heaven!--who knows?"

Who, indeed, did know what influence that book, embalmed in such sacred
memories, might have on the sinner's blasted heart? The fierceness and
sullenness that had repelled and terrified me on our first entrance had
passed away, and sensibility roused from an awful paralysis, started at
the ruins it beheld. There was hope, since he could feel. Richard's
filial mission might not be in vain. But _mine_ was. I realized this
before I left the cell, and resolved to yield to him the task which I
had hoped to share. I could not help feeling grieved and disappointed,
not so much on my own account, as for the indifference manifested to my
mother's memory,--that mother who had loved him, even to her dying hour.

My heart hardened against him; but when I rose to go, and looked round
on the narrow and dismal tomb in which he was inclosed, and then on his
hollow cheek and wasted frame, and thought in all human probability
those walls would prove his grave, it melted with the tenderest
compassion.

"Is there any thing I can do for your comfort?" I asked, trying in vain
to keep back the rushing tears. "Can I send you any thing to do you
good? If you wish to see me ag