"Troubles came thick and fast during the first year of her life. There was a great and sudden change in our father. He had received a package of letters and papers from England, and from the hour of their perusal was a strangely altered man; silent, morose, disinclined to mix with his fellows, or even with his own family, and at times looking haggard and wretched in the extreme. "It was a sad mystery to us boys, but mother, who seemed to have a sorrowful understanding of it, hushed every enquiry into its cause, and would suffer no allusion to it in her presence. "A few months later came one of the sorest trials of my life," continued Kenneth, his voice trembling with excess of feeling. "Angus, my twin brother, my second self, was accidentally drowned. I cannot dwell upon the particulars, but shall never forget my mother's look of woe, her white despairing face, as the dripping corpse was borne and laid down before her, nor the strange unnatural laugh, the expression of mingled agony and triumphant pleasure, with which the father bent over his dead son, saying, 'It's better so! Wife, why do you grieve? I've no tear to shed for him.' "I was inexpressibly shocked and very angry at what I deemed his heartlessness. "This mother saw, with deep sorrow; she loved her husband devotedly, and could not bear to have him unjustly blamed. She felt, too, that it would be necessary at some time for me to know the fatal secret. So one day, after the grave had closed over all that remained of our loved one, she sought me in my room and told me all. "Her husband was an only child, had lost his father by death shortly before coming to this country. Of his mother he had no recollection, but had always understood that she had died soon after his birth. "That, however, was not the case, and those letters from England had revealed to him the fact that she had only just died, at the time when they were written; died in a mad house, a furious, raving maniac, having been in that condition for many years; also that such had been her mother's fate, and that of several others of the family; in short, insanity was undoubtedly hereditary. "From the moment of learning all this he had felt that his doom was sealed, and that of each of his children also. "I cannot describe to you the horror and fear that came over me as I listened to the tale. Then mother told me, oh, so gently and tenderly, of the mystery that hung over my birth; leaving, while it almost orphaned me, a faint hope that that fearful curse was not mine. "And now you know, sweet one, why, when I would fain have poured into your ear the story of my love, my lips were sealed. I could not ask you to link your life with that of one for whom so sad a fate might be in store. I dared not risk the transmission to future generations of a curse so fearful. "But God, in His great mercy, has sent me the knowledge that it is not mine," he added, with a look of deepest gratitude and joy.