After tying up, I was at liberty to renovate my person. My shore-clothes restored me to the semblance of my former self, and, with many a protest of good-will from my late companions, I walked towards the city. In a few hours I reached St. Charles Street, and, as though wearied with its persecution of me, Fortune brought me into the presence of Mr. Stanley. His reception of me was so paternal that the prodigal son could not have been more delighted. My absence from New Orleans had but intensified my affection for the only friend I seemed to possess in all America. Once out of his presence, I felt as a stranger among strangers; on re-entering it, I became changed outwardly and inwardly. Away from him, I was at once shy, silent, morosely severe; with him, I was exuberantly glad, and chatted freely, without fear of repulse. Since we had parted, I had met some thousands, and spoken with a few hundreds; but no one had kindled in me the least spark of personal interest. It may, then, be understood how my greeting expressed my sense of his pre-eminence and rarity. * * * * * Between the last sentence and what follows, there should be an interval represented by many * * * * * *. I do not know how it came about, but I was suddenly fixed immovably, for a period. Preoccupied with my bursting gladness, I had observed nothing but our mutual gratification; and then I had poured my tale of woes unchecked, except by an expression of sympathy, now and again, from him. But, presently, after some commonplaces, his words sounded a deeper note, and stirred my innermost being. A peculiar sensation--as though the wind of a strong breathing was flowing down my back, and ran up with a refluent motion to the head, blowing each hair apart--came over me, and held me spell-bound and thrilled to the soul. _He was saying, with some emotion, that my future should be his charge!_ He had been so powerfully affected by what Margaret had told him, with all the warmth of her Irish nature, of the last scene at the deathbed of his wife, that he had been unable to dissociate me from his thoughts of her; he had wondered what I was doing, what had become of me, imagined that I was starving, and, knowing how friendless and unsophisticated I was, each conjecture had been dismal and pitiful; and he had resolved, on reaching New Orleans, to make diligent search for me, and take me to himself. While he related his extraordinary intentions, it seemed to me as if my spirit was casting an interested regard upon my own image, and was glorying in the wonderful transformation that was taking place. To think that any man should be weaving such generous designs upon a person so unworthy and insignificant as myself, and plotting a felicitous future for me, nursed in contumely and misery, seemed to me to be too wonderful for belief! Then, again, there was a certain mysterious coincidence about it which awed me.