George Selby was notified at once, of course, that the inquiry into his child's disappearance had suddenly and unexpectedly revived itself, after so many years, with the prospect of solving the mystery, if not of restoring the lost one. It was an old wound now, that sudden evanishment of the sweetest blossom which had shone upon their lives. His wife and he, each in pity to the other, seldom spoke of it, and therefore there appeared a skinning over or partial healing to have come; but it still bled inwardly, saddening, and oppressing with unspoken grief. In the fifteen years of their bereavement his wife had been brought down from youth and strength and beauty to premature old age. Within the last twelvemonths a change had come. As she had told him, peace and resignation had come to her, the sad peace of the mourners who resign their loved ones, believing it is well with them, though knowing they shall no more meet on earth; and her health had greatly improved. "Why, then," thought George, "should he disturb her?--revive the deadened misery and cause relapse? There would be doubt and anxiety while the inquiry was in progress, and, alas! there was little that could be called hope to look for at the conclusion." Therefore he said nothing to Mary, but he did not fail to present himself at the examination before the magistrate. It was a horrid idea that their innocent darling should have been murdered by Indians, though it was relieved by the consolatory thought that in all those years of mourning to the parents the child's troubles had long been of the past; and he said nothing when he went home after the first day's inquiry. The next day of examination was one of the most painful George Selby had ever known. He shrank into an unnoticed corner when the box was brought into the court-room--shrank from it, but could not tear away his eyes. And then he listened to Paul's accusation of his Mary's nephew, and for the first time he divined the motive of the seemingly wanton and inexplicable crime. Oh! how deeply in his heart he cursed the detestable money of that domineering old man, who, not satisfied with having his way in life, must needs strive to impose it after death, working misery and soul destruction upon his nearest kin. He shivered and clasped his hands before his eyes when the lid was to be lifted from the box. He heard the drawing of the nails, the creak and giving way of each one in its turn, and then there was a stillness; but after that there came no sigh of horror, the air thrilled with a movement of disappointment, felt rather than to be heard, and he came forward and peered into the faces of the crowd. The one additional horror was to be spared him of being called on to recognize his child's remains in the presence of curious strangers.