Adoptees -- Fiction; Fathers and daughters -- Fiction
"Yet they did not return, but walked on to where the lane was
intersected by the high-road. Here they stopped, and continued to
converse; but it seemed as if she were saying good-by to the stranger,
when a carriage, driven at full speed, was seen approaching; it stopped
close to them; it was an open carriage, a sort of calèche, with the
head pulled forward low down; as it stopped his mother went up to it,
when the stranger, pulling the child's hand from hers, hurried her into
the carriage, and sprang in after, crying out to him, 'Jump in, my boy!'
but, before he could do so, the postillion whipped the horses, who
started forward almost with a bound, and were in a gallop on the
instant; he heard his mother scream; the words 'My child! my son!'
reached his ears, shrieked in agony. He ran wildly after the carriage;
it disappeared, but still he ran on. It must stop somewhere, and he
would reach it--his mother had called for him; and thus, crying,
breathless, panting, he ran along the high-road; the carriage had long
been out of sight, the sun had set; the wind, rising in gusts, brought
on the thunder-storm; yet still he pursued, till nature and his boyish
strength gave way, and he threw himself on the ground to gain breath. At
every sound which he fancied might be that of carriage-wheels, he
started up; but it was only the howling of the blast in the trees, and
the hoarse muttering of the now distant thunder; twice and thrice he
rose from the earth and ran forward; till, wet through and utterly
exhausted, he lay on the ground, weeping bitterly, and expecting to die.
"This was all his story. It produced a strict inquiry among the
servants, and then circumstances scarcely adverted to were remembered,
and some sort of information gained. About a week or ten days before, a
gentleman on horseback, unattended by any servant, had called. He asked
for Mrs. Neville; the servant requested his name, but he muttered that
it was no matter. He was ushered into the room where their mistress was
sitting; he stayed at least two hours; and, when he was gone, they
remarked that her eyes were red, as if she had been weeping. The
stranger called again, and Mrs. Neville was denied to him.
"Inquiries were now instituted in the neighbourhood. One or two persons
remembered something of a stranger gentleman who had been seen riding
about the country, mounted on a fine bay horse. One evening he was seen
coming from the masked gate in the park, which caused it to be believed
that he was on a visit at Dromore. Nothing more was known of him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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