till voice of affection, he spurned his son from him, and ordered
him to leave his house for ever.

The parents of Maria, notwithstanding their first feelings of gratitude
towards the saviour of their daughter, were equally averse to a union
between them; but with Maria the impulse of the heart and the lover's
passionate prayer prevailed over her parents' frowns. They were wed,
they became all to each other, and were disowned by those who gave them
birth.

When Lieutenant Morris left India, he obtained permission to remain in
England for three years; and it was about twelve months after his
arrival that the marriage between him and Maria took place. He had still
two years to spend in his native land, and he hired a secluded and neat
cottage on the banks of the Annan for that period, for the residence of
himself and his young and beautiful wife.

Twelve months after their marriage, Maria became the mother of
twins--the twin brothers of our tale. But three months had not passed,
nor had her infants raised their first smile towards their mother's
face, when the sterile hand of death touched the bosom that supplied
them with life. The young husband wept by the bed of death, with the
hand of her he loved in his.

"William!" said the gentle Maria--and they were her dying words, for she
spoke not again--"my eyes will not behold another sun! I must leave you,
love! Oh my husband! I must leave our poor, our helpless infants! It is
hard to die thus! But when I am gone, dearest--when my babes have no
mother--oh, go to _my mother_, and tell her--tell her, William--that it
was the dying request of her Maria, that she would be as a mother to
them. Farewell, love!--farewell! If"--

Emotion and the strugglings of death overpowered her--her speech
failed--her eyes became fixed--her soul passed away, and the husband sat
in stupefaction and in agony, holding the hand of his dead wife to his
breast. He became conscious that she stirred not--that she breathed
not--oh! that she was not! and the wail of the distracted widower rang
suddenly and wildly through the cottage, startling his infants from
their slumber, and, as some who stood round the bed said, causing even
the features of the dead to move, as though the departed spirit had
lingered, casting a farewell glance upon the body, and passed over it
again, as the voice it had loved to hear rose loud in agony.

The father of Maria came and attended her body to its last, long
resting-