The stranger approached and half knelt as the old man spread his hands over his head, muttering inaudibly. Meanwhile Fanny, pale as death--her lips apart--an eager, painful expression on her face--looked inquiringly on the dark, marked countenance of the visitor, and creeping towards him inch by inch, fearfully touched his dress--his arms--his countenance. "Brother," she said at last, doubtingly and timidly, "Brother, I thought I could never forget you! But you are not like my brother; you are older;--you are--you are!--no! no! you are not my brother!" "I am much changed, Fanny; and you too!" He smiled as he spoke; and the smile-sweet and pitying--thoroughly changed the character of his face, which was ordinarily stern, grave, and proud. "I know you now!" exclaimed Fanny, in a tone of wild joy. "And you come back from that grave! My flowers have brought you back at last! I knew they would! Brother! Brother!" And she threw herself on his breast and burst into passionate tears. Then, suddenly drawing herself back, she laid her finger on his arm, and looked up at him beseechingly. "Pray, now, is he really dead? He, my father!--he, too, was lost like you. Can't he come back again as you have done?" "Do you grieve for him still, then? Poor girl!" said the stranger, evasively, and seating himself. Fanny continued to listen for an answer to her touching question; but finding that none was given, she stole away to a corner of the room, and leaned her face on her hands, and seemed to think--till at last, as she so sat, the tears began to flow down her cheeks, and she wept, but silently and unnoticed. "But, sir," said the guest, after a short pause, "how is this? Fanny tells me she supports you by her work. Are you so poor, then? Yet I left you your son's bequest; and you, too, I understood, though not rich, were not in want!" "There was a curse on my gold," said the old man, sternly. "It was stolen from us." There was another pause. Simon broke it. "And you, young man--how has it fared with you? You have prospered, I hope." "I am as I have been for years--alone in the world, without kindred and without friends. But, thanks to Heaven, I am not a beggar!" "No kindred and no friends!" repeated the old man. "No father--no brother--no wife--no sister!" "None! No one to care whether I live or die," answered the stranger, with a mixture of pride and sadness in his voice. "But, as the song has it-- "'I care for nobody--no, not I, For nobody cares for me!'" There was a certain pathos in the mockery with which he repeated the homely lines, although, as he did, he gathered himself up, as if conscious of a certain consolation and reliance on the resources not dependent on others which he had found in his own strong limbs and his own stout heart. At that moment he felt a soft touch upon his hand, and he saw Fanny looking at him through the tears that still flowed.