place. But he did no more; and he left the churchyard without
acknowledging that he perceived his grief-stricken son-in-law.

In a few months it was necessary for Lieutenant Morris to return to
India, and he could not take his motherless and tender infants thither.
He wrote to the parents of his departed Maria; he told them of her last
request, breathed by her last words; he implored them, as they had once
loved her, during his absence to protect his children.

But the hatred between Mr. Sim and Squire Morris had in no degree
abated. The former would have listened to his daughter's prayer, and
taken her twins and the nurse into his house; but his wife was less
susceptible to the influence of natural feeling, and even, while at
intervals she wept for poor Maria, she said--

"Take both of them, indeed! No, no! I loved our poor, thoughtless,
disobedient Maria, Mr. Sim, as well as you did, but I will not submit to
the Morrises. They have nothing to give the children; we have. But they
have the same, they have a greater right to provide for them than we
have. They shall take one of them, or none of them come into this
house." And again she broke into lamentations over the memory of Maria,
and, in the midst of her mourning, exclaimed--"But the child that we
take shall never be called Morris."

Mr. Sim wrote an answer to his son-in-law, as cold and formal as if it
had been a note added to an invoice; colder indeed, for it had no
equivalent to the poor, hackneyed phrase in all such, of "_esteemed
favours_." In it he stated that he would "bring up" one of the children,
provided that Squire Morris would undertake the charge of the other. The
unhappy father clasped his hands together on perusing the letter, and
exclaimed--

"Must my poor babes be parted?--shall they be brought up to hate each
other? Oh Maria! would that I had died with you, and our children also!"

To take them to India with him, where a war was threatened, was
impossible, and his heart revolted from the thought of leaving them in
this country with strangers. At times he was seen, with an infant son on
each arm, sitting over the stone upon the grave of their mother which he
had reared to her memory, kissing their cheeks and weeping over them,
while they smiled in his face unconsciously, and offered to him, in
those smiles, affection's first innocent tribute. On such occasions
their nurse stood gazing on the scene, wondering at her master's grief.

Morris, o