The old vault dark and grim, with rows of dead-and-gone aristocrats ranged around, in the center the bier banked with flowers, supporting the casket that held--not a dead girl, but a living one, for as the two men gazed with bated breath on the exquisite face, a second low moan sounded on the air, and then a pair of large, soft, wondering, dark eyes opened suddenly, and gazed up into their startled faces! It was enough to shake the nerves of the strongest man, to see the dead thus suddenly come to life, and the old sexton was not strong--in fact, he had suffered for years from an organic disease of the heart. So the shock was more than his weak heart could bear. His face changed to an ashen hue, his old eyes dilated wildly, his frame shook like a leaf in the wind, his knees knocked together, and finally, with an awful groan, he sank in a senseless heap on the floor of the vault. Dalrymple took no heed of the old man’s fate. All his attention was riveted on the girl struggling back to life from her place among the dead. It was no strange face that he gazed on, for years ago he had kissed a fair, childish face with lineaments like these, as he placed the little one in his tender sister’s arms, saying: “Call her Jessie Lyndon, after yourself, dear, and train her up to be noble and loving and true, as you have always been. I would not have her brought up by her proud, rich, heartless mother, who deserted me for my poverty, but rather as you have been, dear, to make a loving wife to your husband through all reverses. I leave her in your care, and I will send you ample money for her support, but Heaven alone knows whether I shall ever return to the land where I have suffered such a cruel shipwreck of my happiness.” That was twelve long years ago that he had wreaked what he believed justifiable revenge on a heartless wife, goaded by ceaseless brooding on his wrongs that had well-nigh turned his brain. Then he had exiled himself from his native land and became a lonely wanderer. I go, but whereso’er I flee There’s not an eye will weep for me. There’s not a kind, congenial heart Where I may claim the smallest part. He had but one solace, and that was in his art. Music had always been a passion with him until love had become its rival. Now Cupid had fled, he turned back to his old love. Drifting to Germany, he found congenial friends, and for some years made a meager living for himself and child, sending all he could spare to America for his golden-haired darling. Then came that long, long illness that swallowed up almost a year of his life in a hospital--that strange illness that baffled the learned physicians, some declaring it was melancholy madness, others an unaccountable loss of memory, but all agreeing that it must have been brought about by long brooding over something that had become almost a monomania.