In answer, as it might seem, to the least shade of doubt on my face, which he thought he observed, he gave me a brief summary of his own life, from which I learned that he had not always been a merchant. He told me that he had been educated for the ministry, and had been ordained, and for two years had preached in various places between Nashville and Savannah; but, finally, becoming lukewarm, he had lost his original enthusiasm for his profession, and had turned his attention to commerce. Intimacy with men of business, and social life, had led him by degrees to consider himself unfitted for a calling which seemed to confine his natural activities; but, though he had lost the desire to expound the Christian faith from the pulpit, he had not lost his principles. The greater gains of commerce had seemed to him to be more attractive than the work of persuading men and women to be devout. After one or two unsuccessful essays as a storekeeper, he had finally adopted a commission business, and had succeeded in several profitable ventures. He thought that, in a few years, he would return to the store business, and settle in ‘one of the back-country places’ for which he had a great hankering; but, at present, he could not make up his mind to terminate his city connections. Much else he related to me, for it was a day of revelations; but to me, personally, it mattered little--it was quite sufficient that he was he, my first, best friend, my benefactor, my father! Only the close student of the previous pages could compass my feelings at finding the one secret wish of my heart gratified so unexpectedly. To have an unbreathed, unformed wish plucked out of the silence, and fashioned into a fact as real as though my dead father had been restored to life and claimed me, was a marvel so great that I seemed to be divided into two individuals--one strenuously denying that such a thing could be, and the other arraying all the proofs of the fact. It was even more of a wonder than that Dick the boy should be transformed into Alice the girl! But when hour after hour passed, and each brought its substantial evidence of the change, the disturbed faculties gradually returned to their normal level, though now more susceptible to happiness than when existence was one series of mortifications.