ation had for the
first time obtained his admission; "the fatal secret can no longer be
concealed from you, and your wife at length consents that I shall be the
instrument of revealing it."

The Doctor paused; for on such occasions it is perhaps as well to let
the party that is about to be shocked receive a little of the blow
through his own imagination; and busily enough was that of my poor
father said to be exercised on this painful occasion. He grew pale,
opened his eyes until they again filled the sockets into which they had
gradually been sinking for twenty years, and looked a hundred questions
that his tongue refused to put.

"It cannot be, Doctor," he at length querulously said, "that a woman
like Betsey has got an inkling into any of the events connected with
the last great secret expedition, and which have escaped my jealousy and
experience?"

"I am afraid, dear sir, that Mrs. Goldencalf has obtained glimpses of
the last great and secret expedition on which we must all, sooner or
later, embark, that have entirely escaped your vigilance. But of this I
will speak some other time. At present it is my painful duty to inform
you it is the opinion of the physician that your excellent wife cannot
outlive the day, if, indeed, she do the hour."

My father was struck with this intelligence, and for more than a minute
he remained silent and without motion. Casting his eyes toward the
papers on which he had lately been employed, and which contained some
very important calculations connected with the next settling day, he at
length resumed:

"If this be really so, Doctor, it may be well for me to go to her, since
one in the situation of the poor woman may indeed have something of
importance to communicate."

"It is with this object that I have now come to tell you the truth,"
quietly answered the divine, who knew that nothing was to be gained by
contending with the besetting weakness of such a man, at such a moment.

My father bent his head in assent, and, first carefully enclosing the
open papers in a secretary, he followed his companion to the bedside of
his dying wife.

CHAPTER II. TOUCHING MYSELF AND TEN THOUSAND POUNDS.

Although my ancestor was much too wise to refuse to look back upon his
origin in a worldly point of view, he never threw his retrospective
glances so far as to reach the sublime mystery of his moral existence;
and while his thoughts might be said to be ever on the stretch to attain