mother's heart; but the sadness and gloom which had settled upon the mind of her husband was not perceptibly lightened thereby. "If I knew Mark was dead," he once remarked to the rector of Lavenham, by whom he was often visited, "I should resign myself to his loss, and soon shake off this heavy grief. But that, my dear sir, which weighs me down--is in fact slowly but surely killing me--is a terrible conviction and presentiment that Green, in order fully to work out his devilish vengeance, will studiously pervert the nature of the child--lead him into evil, abandoned courses--and that I shall one day see him--but I will not tell you my dreams," he added, after stopping abruptly, and painfully shuddering, as if some frightful spectre passed before his eyes. "They are, I trust, mere fancies; and yet--but let us change the subject." This morbidly-dejected state of mind was aggravated by the morose, grasping disposition--so entirely different from what Mr. Bridgman had fondly prophesied of Mark--manifested in greater strength with every succeeding year by his son Andrew, a strangely unlovable and gloomy-tempered boy, as if the anxiety and trouble of the time during which he had been hurried into the world had been impressed upon his temperament and character. It may be, too, that he felt irritated at, and jealous of his father's ceaseless repinings for the loss of his eldest son, who, if recovered, would certainly monopolize the lion's share of the now large family property--but not one whit _too_ large in his--Andrew Bridgman's--opinion for himself alone. The young man had not very long to wait for it. He had just passed his twentieth year when his father died at the early age of forty-seven The last wandering thoughts of the dying parent reverted to the lost child. "Hither Mark," he faintly murmured, as the hushed mourners round his bed watched with mute awe the last flutterings of departing life; "hither: hold me tightly by the hand, or you may lose yourself in this dark, dark wood." These were his last words. On the will being opened, it was found that the whole of his estate, real and personal, had been bequeathed to his son Andrew, charged only with an annuity of £500 to his mother, during life. _But_, should Mark be found, the property was to be _his_, similarly charged with respect to Mrs. Bridgman, and £100 yearly to his brother Andrew, also for life, in addition.