r strangeness--things which had
happened a long time ago; sayings and doings of mine in my childhood,
which I had not the least idea he had either known of or remembered.

When we got in-doors I asked if I should come and sit with him till his
bed-time.

"No--no; thee looks tired, and I have a business letter to write.
Better go to thy bed as usual."

I bade him good-night, and was going, when he called me back.

"How old art thee, Phineas--twenty-four or five?"

"Twenty-five, father."

"Eh! so much?" He put his hand on my shoulder, and looked down on me
kindly, even tenderly. "Thee art but weakly still, but thee must pick
up, and live to be as old a man as thy father. Goodnight. God be with
thee, my son!"

I left him. I was happy. Once I had never expected my old father and
I would have got on together so well, or loved one another so dearly.

In the middle of the night Jael came into my room, and sat down on my
bed's foot, looking at me. I had been dreaming strangely, about my own
childish days, and about my father and mother when we were young.

What Jael told me--by slow degrees, and as tenderly as when she was my
nurse years ago--seemed at first so unreal as to be like a part of the
dream.

At ten o'clock, when she had locked up the house, she had come as usual
to the parlour door, to tell my father it was bed-time. He did not
answer, being sitting with his back to the door, apparently busy
writing. So she went away.

Half an hour afterwards she came again. He sat there still--he had not
moved. One hand supported his head; the other, the fingers stiffly
holding the pen, lay on the table. He seemed intently gazing on what
he had written. It ran thus:

"GOOD FRIEND,

"To-morrow I shall be--"

But there the hand had stopped--for ever.

O dear father! on that to-morrow thou wert with God.

CHAPTER XXII

It was the year 1812. I had lived for ten years as a brother in my
adopted brother's house, whither he had brought me on the day of my
father's funeral; entreating that I should never leave it again. For,
as was shortly afterwards made clear, fate--say Providence--was now
inevitably releasing him from a bond, from which, so long as my poor
father lived, John would never have released himself. It was
discovered that the profits of the tanning trade had long been merely
nominal--that of necessity, for the support of our two families, the
tan-yard must be sold, and the bu