the sound of carriage wheels, and paused to listen; the sound ceased; a shadow darkened the moonlight which had been streaming through an open window, and then Ernest, the playfellow of her childhood, the lover of her youth, stood before her; but how changed, how gloriously changed thought Meeta, even in that hour of hurry and agitation. They gazed on each other in silence for a moment, and then Meeta with a bright smile, yet in a whisper, for even then she forgot not the dying man, asked: "Do you not know me, Ernest?" "Meeta!" he ejaculated, as he took the hand she extended to him, but dropping it almost immediately, he said anxiously: "My father! he lives, Meeta?" "He does, Ernest, and may live, I think _will_ live, for many days yet." "Thank GOD! then I shall see him again!" The conversation had till now been in whispers, but Ernest uttered his ejaculation of thankfulness aloud. There was a movement in the old man's room, a sound, and Meeta glided to his side. "Who were you talking with, my daughter?" he murmured feebly. For many days Franz Rainer had called Meeta daughter, as though he found pleasure in recalling the tie between them. "With one who tells me Ernest has arrived, and will see you soon," said Meeta. "It is Ernest himself. I knew his voice: Ernest, my son!" And the old man's tones were loud and strong, as Meeta had heard them for days. In another moment, Ernest was bending over his father, and they were gazing on each other with a tenderness whose very existence they had not before suspected. Tears were rolling down the face of the once stern old man, as he pressed his son's hand again and again, and murmured blessings on him, and thanks to GOD for his safe return; and Ernest, as he marked the death-shadow on his father's brow, felt that a tie was tearing away which had been woven more intimately than he had supposed with his heart's fibres. The weeping Meeta composed herself that she might soothe them. "Ernest, I cannot let you stay longer here; I am your father's nurse." "My nurse, my daughter, my all, Ernest; your gift to me, my son, which, thank GOD! you have come in time to receive again from my hands. Take her to you, Ernest." The old man held Meeta's hand clasped in his own towards his son, and Ernest touched it, but so slightly and with a hand so cold, that Meeta looked up in alarm. There was a beseeching expression in the eyes that met hers; a look which she did not understand, and yet on which she acted. "Ernest," she said, "you are fatigued to death, and your father has been too much agitated already. Go, I pray you, for the present; I cannot leave your father, but you will find coffee and biscuits by the kitchen fire, and there is a bed prepared in your own room. Good-night; we shall meet again to-morrow," she added with a smile to the old man.