ly, gently, like an angel of release, and
left the seal of peace on that brow, indented in life by the
thunder-scars of sin and crime.

After the first shock, Richard could not help feeling his father's death
an unspeakable blessing, accompanied by such circumstances. In the grave
his transgressions would be forgotten, or remembered only to forgive. He
must now rise, shake off the sackcloth and ashes from his spirit, and
put on the beautiful garments of true manhood. The friends, who had
taken such an interest in his education, must not be disappointed in the
career they had marked out. Arrangements had been made for him to study
his profession with one of the most eminent lawyers of Boston, and he
was anxious to commence immediately, that he might find in mental
excitement an antidote to morbid sensibility and harrowing memory.

My father's wishes and my own turned to Grandison Place, and we prepared
at once for our departure. I had informed Mrs. Linwood by letters of the
events which I have related, and received her heart-felt
congratulations. She expressed an earnest desire to see my father, but
honored too much the motives that induced him to remain, to wish him to
hasten. Now those motives no longer existed, I wrote to announce our
coming, and soon after we bade adieu to one of the most charming abodes
of goodness, hospitality, and pure domestic happiness I have ever known.

"You must write and tell me of all the changes of your changing
destiny," said Mrs. Brahan, when she gave me the parting embrace; "no
one can feel more deeply interested in them than myself. I feel in a
measure associated with the scenes of your life-drama, for this is the
place of your nativity, and it was under this roof you were united to
your noble and inestimable father. Be of good cheer. Good news will
come, wafted from beyond the Indian seas, and your second bridal morn
will be fairer than the first."

I thanked her with an overflowing heart. I did not, like _her_, see the
day-star of hope arising over that second bridal morn, but the sweet
pathetic minor tone breathed in my ear the same holy strain:--

"Brightest and best of the sons of the morning,
Dawn on our darkness, and lend us thine aid;
Star of the East, the horizon adorning,
Guide where our infant Redeemer is laid."

CHAPTER LVIII.

I wish my father could have seen the home of my youth, when he first
beheld it, in the greenness of spring or th