Never were two persons more opposite in disposition than the brothers. The lawyer listened without emotion to a tale of sorrow--human suffering was a matter of indifference to him; while the soldier’s heart was as open as his honest countenance, and his purse answered the appeal of poverty to the fullest extent of his means. Unrelieved, no beggar left his door; and when a comrade eame that way, then indeed the fatted calf was killed,--for with him my father would have shared his last flask, ay, and his last shilling. Years passed away. My sixteenth summer came. My father still remained a widower: and no home from which its chief comfort had been taken, could be happier than our cottage was. Time had softened the sorrow which my mother’s death had caused; and while the old soldier often alluded to his loss, he blessed Heaven that my brother and myself had been spared to be the stay and comfort of life’s winter. Alas! he little dreamed that by both he would be deserted; and tinder circumstances whieh would render his bereavement additionally distressing. It was late in October. The few visitors who, during the bathing season, made the village a temporary abode, had taken their departure. The hamlet was left to its retirement--and our quiet course of life was unvaried, except by incidents of the humblest character. The soldier’s kind and charitable disposition had long endeared him to the neighbourhood; and where he went, the prayer of the poor man followed. With the lawyer, avarice and years kept pace--“none cried, God bless him;” for on a simple community a more detested individual never was inflicted, than my evil relative, Josiah Rawlings. I grew apace; men called me handsome--and young as I was, more than one suitor had told his tale of humble love. But my heart had never yet been touched; my breast was free from care; and with me, as yet, sorrow was only known by name. My brother had just completed his eighteenth year; and a finer lad was never the pride and envy of a village. He was tall, handsome, and athletic. Among the prettiest girls, William was the object of rustic rivalry; and in every manly exercise, the men admitted him to be their superior. And then he was so good-natured and so fearless!--at one moment fondling some playful infant in his arms; at another, when the elements were in their wildest uproar, and the sea broke in thunder on the beach, he would be seen launching the life-boat through a boiling surf, to save some drowning mariner, although to all but the daring spirits who accompanied him, the effort seemed to be equally perilous and unavailing.