"Child, child, you are right. I should have known it, for always at this season, often as it has come to me, do I think of the absent and the dead--of times and hours, and friends long, long passed away. Of those whom I have known," he continued eagerly, "who have fallen in battle, in the toil of the field, on the highway, on the waters, in silent chambers, by sickness, by swords: I thank God they have all, all of my kith and kin and people, died with their names untouched with crime; all," he added with energy, planting his feet firmly on the ground and rising as he spoke sternly, "all, save one alone, and he--" He turned toward the female at his side, and when he looked in her face and saw the mournful expression which came upon it, he dropped back into his chair and stayed his speech. At this moment a little fellow, who, with his flaxen locks and blue eyes, was a very cherub in plumpness and the clearness of his brow, came toddling out of the door of the house, struggling with a basin of yellow corn, which, shifting about in his arms, he just managed to keep possession of till he reached old Sylvester's knee. This was little Sam Peabody, the youngest of the Peabodys, and as he looked up into his grandfather's face you could not fail to see, though they grew so wide apart, the same story of passion and character in each. The little fellow began throwing the bright grain from the basin to a great strutting turkey which went marching and gobbling up and down the door-yard, swelling his feathers, spreading his tail, and shaking his red neck-tie with a boundless pretence and restlessness; like many a hero he was proud of his uniform, although the fatal hour which was to lay him low was not far off. It was the thanksgiving turkey, himself, in process of fattening under charge of Master Sam Peabody. Busy in the act, he was regarded with smiling fondness by his mother, the widow Margaret Peabody, and his old grandfather, when he suddenly turned, and said-- "Grand-pa, where's brother Elbridge?" The old man changed his countenance and struggled a moment with himself. "He had better know all," he said, after a pause of thought, in which he looked, or seemed to look afar off from the scene about him. "Margaret, painful though it be to you and to me, let the truth be spoken. God knows I love your son, Elbridge, and would have laid down my life that this thing had not chanced, but the child asks of his brother so often, and is so often evaded that he will be presently snared in a net of falsehoods and deceptions if we speak not more plainly to him." An inexpressible anguish overspread the countenance of the widowed woman, and she turned aside to breathe a brief prayer of trust and hope of strength in the hour of trial. The thanksgiving turkey, full of his banquet of corn, strutted away to a slope in the sun by the roadside, and little Sam Peabody renewed his question. "Can't I see brother Elbridge, grand-pa?" "Never again, I fear, my child."