I sat back in my chair to read it all over again, first giving my aunt my father’s letter. In a few minutes I heard a cry, and saw my aunt, pale and shaken, standing up, the letter in her hand. “My God!” I cried, “what is it? Is it my mother?” “Yes, yes!” she said. “Be strong, my boy! She is--dead!” For a moment I saw the room whirl, and then, as my Aunt Gainor sat down, I fell on my knees and buried my face in her lap. I felt her dear old hands on my head, and at last would have the letter. It was brief. “MY SON: The hand of God has fallen heavily upon me. Thy mother died to-day of a pleurisy which none could help. I had not even the consolation to hear her speak, since, when I came from Holland, she was wandering in talk of thee, and mostly in French, which I know not. I seek to find God’s meaning in this chastisement. As yet I find it not. It is well that we should not let bereavements so overcome us as to make us neglect to be fervent in the business of life, or to cease to praise Him who has seen fit to take away from us that which it may be we worshipped as an idol. What more is to say I leave until I see thee. My affairs are now so ordered that I may leave them. I shall sail in a week for home in the ship in which I came out, and shall not go, as I did mean, to the islands.” It seemed to me, as I read and re-read it, a cold, hard letter. I said as much to my aunt some days after this; but she wisely urged that my father was ever a reticent man, who found it difficult to let even his dearest see the better part of him. I have no mind to dwell on this sad calamity. I went to and fro, finding neither possibility of repose nor any consolation. I saw as I rode, or lay in my boat, that one dear face, its blue-eyed tenderness, its smile of love. I could never thus recall to sight any other of those who, in after-years, have left me; but this one face is here to-day as I write, forever smiling and forever young. And so time ran on, and nigh to Christmas day my father came home. The weather was more mild than common, and his ship met no delay from ice. I joined him off Chester Creek. He was grayer, older, I thought, but not otherwise altered, having still his erect stature, and the trick I have myself of throwing his head up and his shoulders back when about to meet some emergent occasion. I saw no sign of emotion when we met, except that he opened and shut his hands as usual when disturbed. He asked if I were well, and of my Aunt Gainor, and then, amid the tears which were choking me, if I were satisfied as to the business, and if the tea had arrived. I said yes, and that the ship had been sent away without violence. He said it was a silly business, and the king would soon end it; he himself had been too hasty--with more to like effect.