ination, and entreating her to write if she were
still willing to call him her son. The letter came not to relieve the
agonies of suspense, and mine contained the first tidings he received
from his native land. It found him, as he had said, on a sick-bed, and
its contents imparted new life to his worn and tortured being. He
immediately took passage in a home bound ship, though so weak he was
obliged to be carried on board in a litter. Mr. Harland accompanied him
to New York, where on debarking they had met Mr. Brahan, who had given
him a brief sketch of my visit, and the events that marked it.

As I sat by him on a low seat, with his hand clasped in mine, while he
told me in a low voice of the depth of his penitence, the agonies of his
remorse, and the hope of God's pardon that had dawned on what he
supposed the night clouds of death, I saw him start as if in sudden
pain. The lace sleeve had fallen back from my left arm. His eyes were
fixed on the wound he had inflicted. He bent his head forward, and
pressed his lips on the scar.

"They shall look upon him whom they have pierced," he murmured. "O my
Saviour I could thy murderers feel pangs of deeper remorse at the sight
of thy scarred hands and wounded side?"

"Never think of it again, dear Ernest. I did not know it, did not feel
it. It never gave me a moment's pang."

"Yes, I remember well why you did not suffer."

"But you must not remember. If you love me, Ernest, make no allusion to
the past. The future is ours; youth and hope are ours; and the promises
of God, sure and steadfast, are ours. I feel as Noah and his children
felt when they stepped from the ark on dry land, and saw the waters of
the deluge retreating, and the rainbow smiling on its clouds. What to
them were the storms they had weathered, the dangers they had overcome?
They were all past. Oh, my husband, let us believe that ours are past,
and let us trust forever in the God of our fathers."

"I do--I do, my Gabriella. My faith has hitherto been a cold
abstraction; now it is a living, vital flame, burning with steady and
increasing light."

At this moment Edith, who had seated herself at the harp, remembering
well the soothing influence of music on her brother's soul, touched its
resounding strings; and the magnificent strains of the _Gloria in
Excelsis_,

--"rose like a stream
Of rich distilled perfume."

I never heard any thing sound so sweet and heavenly. It came in, a
sublime cho