that I cared for; and, after in vain offering a reward to any one who could give any information concerning you, and shedding a few tears over the grave of my wife, I returned to Holland with my sorrowful intelligence. Your father, quite sunk with your uncertain fate, fell into a lowness of spirits that preyed upon his health, and continually reflected upon himself as the cause of your mother's early death, and your destitution. "As the monotony and dulness of garrison duty in a strongly-fortified town served to increase his melancholy, which threatened to merge into consumption, he, by the advice of his physician--that change of scene, and a warm climate, might remove all the bad symptoms he exhibited--exchanged into a regiment stationed in the Island of Ceylon, into which I also enlisted, that I might accompany him. There was, alas! no other individual on earth for whom I cared. Far from recovering on the voyage, its tedious dulness sunk him more and more into his habitual lowness of spirits; and, on our arrival on the island, he grew worse, and did not survive many months. I buried him at Trincomalee. Alas! how true is the saying, that 'all men know where they were born, but none where they shall lay their bones.'" So intense had been the interest I felt in his narrative, that I scarcely moved, lest I should lose a word, or interrupt him. He paused at this event, and wiped a tear from his eyes. William and Mary I had until this hour looked upon as my real parents. For those I now heard of, I had new feelings to acquire. I noticed that he did not tell me the surname of my parents, and I pressed not the question. All that I asked of him was to continue his history, and inform me what had induced him once more to return to Scotland. "Can a Scotsman ask that question of a Scotsman?" said he. "In whatever part of the globe he may be, the hope to lay his bones with his fathers is the Polar Star that cheers his wanderings, be they prosperous or adverse. Remove this hope, and his energies from that moment sink, for he has lost all of life worth caring for. I have both known and felt it. But to proceed:--