"Stop!" said Vivian, laying my hand on his own, and with his old bitter smile on his lip,--"stop! Do you think it mercy to save the bird? What from; and what for? From a natural enemy,--from a short pang and a quick death? Fie! is not that better than slow starvation,--or, if you take more heed of it, than the prison-bars of a cage? You cannot restore the nest, you cannot recall the parent. Be wiser in your mercy,--leave the bird to its gentlest fate." I looked hard on Vivian: the lip had lost the bitter smile. He rose and turned away. I sought to take up the poor bird; but it did not know its friends, and ran from me, chirping piteously,--ran towards the very jaws of the grim enemy. I was only just in time to scare away the beast, which sprang up a tree and glared down through the hanging boughs. Then I followed the bird, and as I followed, I heard, not knowing at first whence the sound came, a short, quick, tremulous note. Was it near, was it far? From the earth, in the sky? Poor parent bird, like parent-love, it seemed now far and now near; now on earth, now in sky! And at last, quick and sudden, as if born of the space, lo, the little wings hovered over me! The young bird halted, and I also. "Come," said I, "ye have found each other at last,--settle it between you!" I went back to the outcast. CHAPTER II. Pisistratus.--"How came you to know we had stayed in the town?" Vivian.--"Do you think I could remain where you left me? I wandered out, wandered hither. Passing at dawn through yon streets, I saw the hostlers loitering by the gates of the yard, overheard them talk, and so knew you were all at the inn,--all!" He sighed heavily. Pisistratus.--"Your poor father is very ill. Oh, cousin, how could you fling from you so much love?" Vivian.--"Love! his! my father's!" Pisistratus.--"Do you really not believe, then, that your father loved you?" Vivian.--"If I had believed it, I had never left him. All the gold of the Indies had never bribed me to leave my mother." Pisistratus.--"This is indeed a strange misconception of yours. If we can remove it, all may be well yet. Need there now be any secrets between us? [persuasively]. Sit down, and tell me all, cousin." After some hesitation, Vivian complied; and by the clearing of his brow and the very tone of his voice I felt sure that he was no longer seeking to disguise the truth. But as I afterwards learned the father's tale as well as now the son's, so, instead of repeating Vivian's words, which-- not by design, but by the twist of a mind habitually wrong--distorted the facts, I will state what appears to me the real case, as between the parties so unhappily opposed. Reader, pardon me if the recital be tedious; and if thou thinkest that I bear not hard enough on the erring hero of the story, remember that he who recites, judges as Austin's son must judge of Roland's. CHAPTER III. Vivian. At The Entrance of Life Sits--The Mother.