ail of what had occurred.

Sir Charles, in a state of feverish anxiety, as soon as he heard of
their arrival, hastened up to town to question these men; and the
result of his interrogatories fully convinced him that he was now quite
bereaved and childless. This was the last blow and the most severe; it
was long before he could resign himself to the unsearchable
dispensations of Providence; but time and religion had at last overcome
all his repining feelings,--all disposition to question the goodness or
wisdom of his Heavenly Father, and he was enabled to say, with
sincerity, "Not my will, but Thine be done."

But although Sir Charles was thus left childless, as years passed away,
he at last found that he had those near to him for whom he felt an
interest, and one in particular who promised to deserve all his regard.
This was his grand-nephew, Alexander Wilmot, who was the legal heir to
the title and entailed property,--the son of a deceased nephew, who had
fallen during the Peninsular war.

On this boy Sir Charles had lavished those affections which it pleased
Heaven that he should not bestow upon his own issue, and Alexander
Wilmot had gradually become as dear to him as if he had been his own
child. Still the loss of his wife and children was ever in his memory,
and as time passed on, painful feelings of hope and doubt were
occasionally raised in Sir Charles's mind, from the occasional
assertions of travelers, that all those did not perish who were supposed
so to do when the _Grosvenor_ was wrecked, and that, from the reports of
the natives, some of them and of their descendants were still alive. It
was a paragraph in the newspaper, containing a renewal of these
assertions, which had attracted the attention of Sir Charles, and which
had put him in the state of agitation and uneasiness in which we have
described him at the opening of this chapter.

We left him in deep and painful thought, with the newspaper in his
hands. His reveries were interrupted by the entrance of Alexander
Wilmot, who resided with him, being now twenty-two years of age, and
having just finished his college education. Alexander Wilmot was a tall,
handsome young man, very powerful in frame, and very partial to all
athletic exercises; he was the best rower and the best cricketer at
Oxford, very fond of horses and hunting, and an excellent shot; in
character and disposition he was generous and amiable, frank in his
manner, and obliging to his infe