Ah, if an influence so sweet had sweetened his life--if an affection so pure had purified his mind--how different it might have been with him! The cobwebs of scepticism and bitter distrust might have been swept from his soul. He might have grown into a good and noble man. For I recognised qualities in uncle Bryan's nature far higher than those with which the men I was acquainted with were gifted. My blind unreasoning anger against him was gone, and I felt only pity for the desolate old man. I pictured him, as he had desired me to do, an old man with a bleeding heart, into whose life but few rays of sunshine had passed--an old man who in his youth had been soured, misdirected, misjudged, his rare qualities and gifts turned against himself; and I pitied him with a full heart, and most freely forgave him. At this point I recalled everything in his character that spoke in his favour--his love of flowers, his love of justice, which had something heroic in it, his contempt for meanness and roguery, his gentle behaviour towards my mother, by whom alone he was properly understood. He would have been astonished had he known my thoughts. In this better mood I continued my work. Tick, tick, tick, went the little clock on the mantelpiece, and the sound seemed to add to the stillness instead of disturbing it. Once, upon raising my eyes to my mother's bed, I fancied that she was awake and was observing me. I stole towards the bed, but her eyes were closed; I kissed her softly, and resumed my work. The wood-block I was engaged upon represented a woman standing by a field after the corn had been cut and gathered. It was sunset, and the woman, who was between forty and fifty years of age, was gazing sadly and mournfully at the setting sun and the bare field, with only the stubble left on it. I knew the story which the picture was intended to illustrate. The woman had been parted from her son, who was in a distant land, many thousands of miles across the sea, and the last news she had received from him represented him as being beset by misfortune and sickness. She was standing now, thinking mournfully of the times when she and he were together; and the sun, setting among sad clouds, and the cornfield, shorn of its golden glory, were in fit keeping with her thoughts. Another picture drawn on the wood, and which I had not yet commenced to engrave, lay before me. The scene was the same, and the figure of the woman was there, but the time and circumstances were different from the last. It was morning in the opening of summer; the corn was ripening, and lying on the ground at the mother's feet was the son, restored to her in health. Insensibly, as I proceeded with my work, my thoughts reverted to a certain time in my childhood when my mother toiled during the day and sat up late in the night working for me. How many a night had I seen her sitting at the table in our poorly-furnished one room, stitching