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.

It is sad to look upon the ruins of a palace in whose halls the gay
song and careless laugh long ago echoed; to contemplate the desolation
of the choked fountains in gardens which _were_ princely; and with
difficulty to make one's way through encroaching weeds and tangled
briers, over what once were paths where beauty lingered and listened
to the vow of love; or to wander through the streets of a disentombed
city, or seated on a fallen column, or the stone steps of the
disinterred amphitheatre, to think of the human hearts that here, a
thousand years agone, beat emulously with the hopes and fears, the
loves and hates, the joys and sorrows, the aspiration and despai