have neither the strength or the experience which could best serve a
young settler on a strange soil, still, under my eye, my poor boy will
be at once more prudent and more persevering. We sail next week."

Faber spoke so cheerfully that I knew not how to express compassion;
yet, at his age, after a career of such prolonged and distinguished
labour, to resign the ease and comforts of the civilized state for
the hardships and rudeness of an infant colony, seemed to me a dreary
prospect; and, as delicately, as tenderly as I could to one whom I loved
and honoured as a father, I placed at his disposal the fortune which, in
great part, I owed to him,--pressing him at least to take from it enough
to secure to himself, in his own country, a home suited to his years
and worthy of his station. He rejected all my offers, however earnestly
urged on him, with his usual modest and gentle dignity; and assuring me
that he looked forward with great interest to a residence in lands new
to his experience, and affording ample scope for the hardy enjoyments
which had always most allured his tastes, he hastened to change the
subject.

"And who, think you, is the admirable helpmate my scape-grace has had
the saving good luck to find? A daughter of the worthy man who undertook
the care of poor Dr. Lloyd's orphans,--the orphans who owed so much to
your generous exertions to secure a provision for them; and that child,
now just risen from her father's grave, is my pet companion, my darling
ewe lamb,--Dr. Lloyd's daughter Amy."

Here the child joined us, quickening her pace as she recognized the old
man, and nestling to his side as she glanced wistfully towards myself.
A winning, candid, lovable child's face, somewhat melancholy, somewhat
more thoughtful than is common to the face of childhood, but calm,
intelligent, and ineffably mild. Presently she stole from the old man,
and put her hand in mine.

"Are you not the kind gentleman who came to see him that night when he
passed away from us, and who, they all say at home, was so good to my
brothers and me? Yes, I recollect you now." And she put her pure face to
mine, wooing me to kiss it.

I kind! I good! I--I! Alas! she little knew, little guessed, the
wrathful imprecation her father had bequeathed to me that fatal night!

I did not dare to kiss Dr. Lloyd's orphan daughter, but my tears fell
over her hand. She took them as signs of pity, and, in her infant
thankfulness, silently kissed me.