s, and our extraordinary resemblance in youth and early
manhood caused mistakes as numerous as those recorded in the Comedy of
Errors, and laid the foundation of a tragedy seldom found in the
experience of life."

While they were conversing, I stole from the room and ran up stairs to
tell Mrs. Brahan the wondrous tidings. Her sympathy was as heart-felt as
I expected,--her surprise less. She never could believe that man my
father. Mr. Brahan always said he was an impostor, only he had no means
to prove it.

"How beautiful!" she said, her eyes glistening with sympathetic emotion,
"that he should find you here, in his own wedded home,--the place of
your birth,--the spot sanctified by the holiest memories of love. Has
not your filial mission been blest? Has not Providence led you by a way
you little dreamed of? My dear Gabriella, you must not indulge another
sad misgiving or gloomy fear. Indeed you must not."

"I know I ought not; but come and see my father."

"What is he like?" she asked, with a smile.

"Like the dream of my childhood, when I imagined him one of the sons of
God, such as once came down to earth."

"Romantic child!" she exclaimed; but when she saw my father, I read
admiration as well as respect in her speaking eye, and I was satisfied
with the impression he had made.

Richard came soon after informed by his father of all I could tell him
and a great deal more, which he subsequently related to me. I think he
was happier to know that he was cousin, than when he believed himself my
brother. The transition from a lover to a brother was too painful. He
could not divest himself of the idea of guilt, which, however
involuntary, made him shudder in remembrance. But a cousin! The
tenderness of natural affection and the memories of love, might unite in
a bond so near and dear, and hallow each other.

In the joy of my emancipation from imagined disgrace, I did not forget
that the cloud still rested darkly on him,--that he still groaned under
the burden which had been lifted from my soul. He told me that he had
hope of his father's ultimate regeneration,--that he had found him much
softened,--that he wept at the sight of Theresa's Bible, and still more
when he read aloud to him the chapters which gave most consolation to
her dying hours.

The unexpected visit of his brother, from whom he had been so long
separated, and whom he supposed was dead, had stirred still deeper the
abysses of memoir and feeling.

I