ALL these things compelled me to think about them, because they were so different from what might have been expected. When first I lost my wife, and knew that I had been robbed of her, I made up my mind for savage work, and nothing could be too wild for me. The greatest wrong that man can do to man had been done to me; for a stab to the bodily heart is better than the destruction of faith and love. But the care for my dear wife’s good name, (which would have been blasted, if ever it got abroad that she had eloped with the money), as well as many other tender thoughts, had kept me quiet, and conduced to stop me from any acts of violence. And this instinct of true love proved quite right; as all will confess who care to know the end of it. Straitened as I was with my own cares, and sometimes buried in them, I could not help trying to lift if it were but the corner of the burden imposed by Heaven upon a man a thousandfold better and more noble. The only excuse I could make to myself, for the different way in which he bore his grief, was that he was bound to do it as a clergyman, and being so old, must be getting used to it. But I knew in my heart that this was paltry stuff; and that the true reason of the difference was, that he was a large man with faith in God; while I was a little one relying upon self. There was no way before me to cure that, for no man can set up his ladder on a cloud; still it did me good to know that he had found staple support, and was steadfast upon heaven. Mr. Golightly was not only a Christian, but a gentleman. Far as I was below his rank in life, he never let me feel the difference, either by word, or turn of manner, or even by tone of silence. He never inquired into my affairs, though no indifference prevented it; and nothing was further from his mind than the thought that he was doing good to me. Being of a nature which requires something to love, I loved this man, and never could see anything to laugh at in him, as my Uncle Cornelius made believe to do. I became restless if any day went by without my seeing him, and I could not sleep on my two chairs, however tired I might be, without the remembrance of his—“Good-night, God bless you, Kit”—which he always gave me, in a gentle voice, and with a look which was itself a blessing. And now I had been admitted to the acquaintance of his darling; whom he loved as I loved Kitty, but with a holier sense and fear. She was lying on a horsehair sofa, in his poorly furnished room; for he was poor, as a good man is nearly always somehow. And I never shall forget the look she gave me from her weary eyes, quite as if the depth of kindness were enhanced by its want of power. And she rose upon one wasted arm, and offered me a hand just like a white kid glove, that has been drawn off. “You have been very good to father;” she looked at my sunburnt face, as if she would like to remember it somewhere else; “and what lovely grapes you bring me! See, how greedy I have been!”