“Oh, my boy, I am so glad, so glad! God is good to give you back, when I’ve never served Him all my life, but I’m trying to now. Oh, Hugh, my heart is so full,” and Mrs. Worthington’s tears dropped fast, as like a weary child, which wanted to be soothed, she laid her head upon his bosom, crying quietly. And Hugh, stronger now than she, held the poor, tired head there, and kissed the white forehead, where there were more wrinkles than when he last observed it. Folding his weak arms about her, mother and son wept together in that moment of perfect understanding and union with each other. Hugh was the first to rally. It seemed so pleasant to lean on him, to know that he cared so much for her, that Mrs. Worthington would gladly have rested on his bosom longer, but Hugh who noticed that she held an open letter in her hand brought her back to something of the old, sad life, by asking. “If the letter were from ’Lina?” “Yes, and I can’t make it all out you know she writes so blind.” “It never troubles me, and I feel perfectly able to read it,” Hugh said, and taking the letter from her unresisting hand, he asked that another pillow should be placed beneath his head, while he read it aloud. The pillow was arranged, and then Mrs. Worthington sat down upon the bed to hear the letter, which read as follows: “FIFTH AVENUE HOTEL, NEW YORK, “October, 1860: “DEAR MOTHER,— “What a little eternity it is since I heard from you, and how am I to know that you are not all dead and buried. Were it not that no news is good news, I should sometimes fancy that Hugh was worse, and feel terribly for not having gone home when you did. But of course if he were worse, you would write, and so I settle down upon that, and quiet my troublesome conscience. “Now, then, to business, I want Hugh to send me some money, or all is lost. Let me explain. “Here I am at Fifth Avenue Hotel, as good as any lady, if my purse is almost empty. Plague on it, why didn’t that Mrs. Johnson send me two thousand instead of one? It would not hurt her, and then I should get through nicely.” “You see that thousand is almost gone and as board is two and a half dollars per day, I can’t stay long and shop in Broadway with old Mrs. Richards as I am expected to do in my capacity of heiress. There never was so lucky a hit as that, or anything that took so well, just think—I, Adeline Worthington, _nee_ Adeline Murdoch, who used to help wash her own clothes in Elmwood, and who once talked of learning a vulgar trade, and did sew a week for old Aunt Jerusha Tubbs, here am I, metamorphosed into a Kentucky heiress, who can say and do anything she pleases on the strength of being an heiress, and hailing from a State where folks own niggers. I tell you, _Spring Bank, Kentucky_—has done wonders for me in the way of getting me noticed.