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. “Oh, my friend!” I murmured to Faber, “I have much that I yearn to say to you--alone--alone! Come to my house with me, be at least my guest as long as you stay in this town.” “Willingly,” said Faber, looking at me more intently than he had done before, and with the true eye of the practised Healer, at once soft and penetrating.