The aberration of mind of the unhappy Mr. Armstrong was at last with inevitable and steady step approaching its dreaded culminating point. To the outward eye he exhibited but little change. He was indeed, at times more restless, and his eyes would wander round as if in quest of some object that was trying to elude his sight; at one moment listless, silent, and dejected, and again animated, almost gay, like one who, ashamed of an exhibition of moody temper, tries to atone by extraordinary efforts of amiability for the error. His intimate friends had some knowledge of these changes, and to Faith, above all, living with him in the same house, and in the tender relation of a daughter to a parent, each of whom idolized the other, they were painfully apparent, and great was the anxiety they occasioned. How bitter were the tears which in solitude she shed, and frequent and fervent her supplications to the universal Father to pity and protect her father! How willingly, even at the sacrifice even of her own life, would she have restored peace and happiness to him! But to the neighbors, to those who saw Armstrong only in public, no great change was manifest. He was thinner and paler than usual, to be sure, but every one was liable to attacks of indisposition, and there was no reason why he should be exempt; he did not speak a great deal, but he was always rather taciturn, and when he did converse, it was with his usual sweetness and affability. They guessed he'd be better after a while. Such was the common judgment in the little community among those who had any knowledge of Armstrong's condition. They saw him daily in the streets. They conversed with him, and could see nothing out of the way. But some few who recollected the history of the family, and the circumstances attending the latter years of Armstrong's father, shook their heads, and did not hesitate to intimate that there had always been something strange about the Armstrongs. Curious stories, too, were told about the grandfather, and there was a dim tradition, nobody knew whence it came, or on what authority it rested, that the original ancestor of the family in this country, was distinguished in those days of ferocious bigotry, when the Indians were regarded by many as Canaanites, whom it was a religious duty to extirpate, as much for an unrelenting severity against the natives, bordering even on aberration of mind, as for reckless courage.