As he thus spoke, and placed Fanny again on the ground, he was startled to see: precisely on the spot where he had seen before the like apparition--on the same spot where the father had cursed the son, the motionless form of an old man. Morton recognised, as if by an instinct rather than by an effort of the memory, the person to whom he was bound. He walked slowly towards him; but Fanny abruptly left his side, lured by a moth that flitted duskily over the graves. “Your name, sir, I think, is Simon Gawtrey?” said Morton. “I have came to England in quest of you.” “Of me?” said the old man, half rising, and his eyes, now completely blind, rolled vacantly over Morton’s person--“Of me?--for what?--Who are you?--I don’t know your voice!” “I come to you from your son!” “My son!” exclaimed the old man, with great vehemence,--“the reprobate!--the dishonoured!--the infamous!--the accursed--” “Hush! you revile the dead!” “Dead!” muttered the wretched father, tottering back to the seat he had quitted,--“dead!” and the sound of his voice was so full of anguish, that the dog at his feet, which Morton had not hitherto perceived, echoed it with a dismal cry, that recalled to Philip the awful day in which he had seen the son quit the father for the last time on earth. The sound brought Fanny to the spot; and, with a laugh of delight, which made to it a strange contrast, she threw herself on the grass beside the dog and sought to entice it to play. So there, in that place of death, were knit together the four links in the Great Chain;--lusty and blooming life--desolate and doting age--infancy, yet scarce conscious of a soul--and the dumb brute, that has no warrant of a Hereafter! “Dead!--dead!” repeated the old man, covering his sightless balls with his withered hands. “Poor William!” “He remembered you to the last. He bade me seek you out--he bade me replace the guilty son with a thing pure and innocent, as he had been had he died in his cradle--a child to comfort your old age! Kneel, Fanny, I have found you a father who will cherish you--(oh! you will, sir, will you not?)--as he whom you may see no more!” There was something in Morton’s voice so solemn, that it awed and touched both the old man and the infant; and Fanny, creeping to the protector thus assigned to her, and putting her little hands confidingly on his knees, said-- “Fanny will love you if papa wished it. Kiss Fanny.” “Is it his child--his?” said the blind man, sobbing. “Come to my heart; here--here! O God, forgive me!” Morton did not think it right at that moment to undeceive him with regard to the poor child’s true connexion with the deceased: and he waited in silence till Simon, after a burst of passionate grief and tenderness, rose, and still clasping the child to his breast, said-- “Sir, forgive me!--I am a very weak old man--I have many thanks to give--I have much, too, to learn. My poor son! he did not die in want,--did he?”