So, with a wistful look at the pensive, delicate face that never had grown, never could grow old, I glanced at the empty panel that intervened between this picture and the the next. That space surely once had held a portrait, and with a rapid transition of fancy, I thought of the picture with its face to the wall, in the deserted room upstairs. That was it, I made no manner of doubt, that had once hung here. Beyond it was the mother's portrait, fair, gentle, and sad: beneath this picture, and depending from its frame, hung a little crayon sketch, that I examined with interest, thinking to find it identical, possibly, with the miniature, which I pulled from my pocket to compare. But a glance refuted that idea; not the faintest likeness between them, nothing in common but human features. It represented (the sketch I mean) a boy of about my own age, with such a fine, glowing, ardent face as made "new life-blood warm the bosom," only to look into his truthful eyes, only to catch the merry smile that lingered about his handsome mouth. It had, however, such a likeness to Mr. Rutledge, that I should, despite the difference that time had wrought have imagined him to be the original of the picture, had I not found, written hastily and faintly in one corner, "Obit. 1830," and some words in Latin that I could not make myself mistress of. I was so intent upon it, that I did not notice Mr. Rutledge's entrance till he stood beside me. I pocketed the miniature, which I still held in my hand, in hot haste, and turned to meet his inquiring eyes. "Are you making acquaintance with my ancestors?" he asked. I answered that I had been looking at the pictures. "But this," pointing to the crayon head, "this is not an ancestor, is it?" "No," he said, with a half smile, "not exactly an ancestor; a relation." I asked him if it was not considered like him. He had been told, he said, that there was some resemblance. I looked at it with a critical eye, and then remarked that the resemblance lay, I thought, in the contour of the face, and perhaps something about the eyes; but the expression was as different from his as it was possible for an expression to be. "That's true," he said looking at it sadly; "that face expresses what no man's face can express after thirty: hope and courage, and an unshaken confidence in the honesty of his fellows." I did not fancy that doctrine very much, so I began talking of the other pictures. Of the older ones, Mr. Rutledge gave me some slight sketches, passing briefly by those that I knew he could have told me most about. But I turned admiringly back to the sketch that had so much taken my fancy. "After all," I said, "this is the finest face among them." Mr. Rutledge shook his head dissentingly, and looked sadly up at Richard's portrait.