m me." He uttered these words with slow reverence of voice.

Why did self come up?

"You gave Sophie _our_ mother's marriage-ring," I said, "and I"--

"Shall wear this," said my father. "I laid it here, with hers;" and he
gently lifted the sacred hair, and, freeing the ring, put it upon my
finger.

"This is not my marriage-day," I said. "Papa, I don't want it. Besides,
gentlemen don't wear marriage-rings: how came you to?"

"Perhaps I have not worn this one; but will you wear it to please me?"

"Why will it please you? It is not symbolical, is it?"

"It makes you doubly mine," he said; and he led me back to outside life,
with this strange sort of marriage-ring circling with its planet weight
around my finger.

Did my father mean to keep me forever? And with the question came an
answer that left sweet contentment in its pathway; it accorded with the
intent of my heart.

"Father, have you made me your friend?" I asked, in the room that was
terribly tossed, as I restored to place chairs that seemed to have been
in a deplorably long dance, and to have forgotten their home at its
close.

"You wear my ring, you have come into my orbit," he answered.

"That being true, I am as much interested in the flying comet in there
as you are,--for if it strikes you, it hurts me;" and I waited his
answer.

After a moment of pause, it came.

"My poor patient is very ill; his life will burn out, if the fever is
not stayed;" and as the frenzied laugh reached us, Dr. Percival forgot
my presence; he passed his hand slowly across his brow, as if to retouch
memory, and then taking down a volume, he began to read. I waited long.
At last he closed the book suddenly, said to himself, "I'll try it," and
in half a moment my father's white hairs were separated from me by the
impassable barrier of the sick-room.

I waited; he did not come. The chairs were not the only articles that
had lost the commodity of order in my absence. I went to the table upon
which were kept the papers, etc., that lingered there a little while,
and then were thought no longer of. Idly I turned them over. What a
chaos on a small scale! all the elements of literature were represented.
I listened for coming footsteps; none came. "I may as well arrange this
table," I thought, "as wait for the morrow;" and I made a beginning by
sweeping the chaos at once upon the carpet. Then slowly I began picking
them up, one by one, and appointing them stations. My task was ne