eir wounds
after all. And yet it was not likely--it was hardly possible--that John
could have been in the affray, his indentures protecting him from the
impress. These cogitations were speedily followed by others of as gloomy
a character; for the thoughts breed faster than we can perceive them,
and each multiplies after his kind. It was a year since he had heard
from his friends, and five years since he had seen them. Who could tell
what changes had taken place in that time? Who could tell whether poor
John had even lived to be killed by the pressgang? His father, his
mother, and his sisters--were they dead, were they living, were they
sick, or in health? His sister had been always a delicate girl, one of
those gentle and fragile flowers of mortality that are sure not to live
till the summer; perhaps consumption, with the deceitful beauty of his
smile, had already led his fair partner down the short dance of life.

Tormenting himself with such speculations, he arrived at his father's
house. Here he was surprised, bewildered, almost shocked, to observe a
new and handsome farm-house in place of the old one. On looking farther
on, however, he did detect the ancient habitation of his family, in its
original site; but it seemed, from the distance where he stood, to be
falling into ruins. His whole race must either be dead or banished, and
a new tribe of successors settled in their place; or else uncle William
must be deceased, and have left his father money enough to build a new
house. He walked up to the door, where he stood trembling for some
minutes, without courage to put his hand to the latch, and at last went
round to the window, and, with a desperate effort, looked in. How his
heart bounded! His father was there, still a stout healthy man of middle
life, his hair hardly beginning to be grizzled, by the meddling finger
of the old painter Time; and his mother, as handsome as ever, and her
face relieved by the smile either of habitual happiness, or of some
momentary cause of joyful excitation, from the Madonna cast which had
distinguished it in less prosperous days; and his sister, with only
enough left of her former delicacy of complexion to chasten the
luxuriant freshness of health on the ripe cheeks of nineteen. John,
indeed, was not there; but a vacant chair stood by the table ready to
receive him, and another--a second chair, beside it, only nearer the
fire--for whom?--for himself. His heart told him that it was. Som