"You can scarcely imagine the eagerness with which I looked forward to an arrival in my native city. We had friends there, and a fortune, and I fed my heart with the pleasing hope that skilful physicians would awaken my father's slumbering reason into renewed and healthy activity. Arrived there at last, we took lodgings at a hotel, where I wrote a brief note to my father's partner, in whose hands all the business had been, of course, during our absence, stating a few facts as to our long absence and asking him to attend upon us immediately. After dispatching this note, I waited in almost breathless expectation, looking every moment to see Mr. Paralette enter. But hour after hour passed, and no one came. Then I sent notes to two or three of my father's friends, whom I recollected, but met with no response during the day. All this strange indifference was incomprehensible to me. It was, in part, explained to my mind on the next morning, when one of the persons to whom I had written called, and was shown up into our parlor by request. There was a coldness and reserve about him, combined with a too evident suspicion that it was not all as I had said. That my father was not Mr. Ballantine, nor I his daughter--but both, in fact, impostors! And certain it is that the white-headed imbecile old man bore but little resemblance to the fine, manly, robust form, which my father presented three years before. The visitor questioned and cross-questioned me; and failed not to hint at what seemed to him discrepancies, and even impossibilities in my story. I felt indignant at this, at the same time that my heart sank at the suddenly flashing conviction that, after all our sufferings and long weary exile from our home, we should find ourselves but strangers in the land of our birth--be even repulsed from our own homestead. "Our visitor retired after an interview of about half an hour, giving me to understand pretty plainly that he thought both my father and myself impostors. His departure left me faint and sick at heart. But from this state I aroused myself, after a while, and determined to go and see Mr. Paralette at once. A servant called a carriage, and I ordered the driver to take me to the store of Ballantine & Paralette. "'There is no such a firm now, madam,' he said; 'Mr. Ballantine was lost at sea some years ago. It is Paralette & Co. now.' "'Drive me there, then,' I said, in a choking voice. "In a few minutes the carriage stopped at the place I had designated, and I entered the store formerly kept by my father. Though I had been absent for eight years, yet everything looked familiar, and nothing more familiar than the face of Mr. Paralette, my father's partner. I advanced to meet him with a quick step, but his look of unrecognition, and the instant remembrance that he had not attended to my note, and moreover that it had been plainly hinted to me that I was an impostor, made me hesitate, and my whole manner to become confused.