eated himself, and gazed silently on the
inanimate and unknown form he held so strangely within his arms. Those
lips, now closed as if in death, had uttered however one word
which thrilled to his heart, and still echoed, like a supernatural
annunciation, within his ear. He examined with an eye of agitated
scrutiny the fair features no longer sensible of his presence. He
gazed upon that transparent brow, as if he would read some secret in
its pellucid veins; and touched those long locks of golden hair with a
trembling finger, that seemed to be wildly seeking for some vague and
miraculous proof of inexpressible identity. The fair creature had
called him 'Father.' His dreaming reveries had never pictured a being
half so beautiful! She called him 'Father!' Tha word had touched
his brain, as lightning cuts a tree. He looked around him with a
distracted air, then gazed on the tranced form he held with a glance
which would have penetrated her soul, and murmured unconsciously the
wild word she had uttered. She called him 'Father!' He dared not think
who she might be. His thoughts were wandering in a distant land;
visions of another life, another country, rose before him, troubled
and obscure. Baffled aspirations, and hopes blighted in the bud, and
the cherished secrets of his lorn existence, clustered like clouds
upon his perplexed, yet creative, brain. She called him, 'Father!' It
was a word to make him mad. 'Father!' This beautiful being had
called him 'Father,' and seemed to have expired, as it were, in the
irresistible expression. His heart yearned to her; he had met her
embrace with an inexplicable sympathy; her devotion had seemed, as it
were, her duty and his right. Yet who was she? He was a father. It
was a fact, a fact alike full of solace and mortification, the
consciousness of which never deserted him. But he was the father of an
unknown child; to him the child of his poetic dreams, rather than his
reality. And now there came this radiant creature, and called him
'Father!' Was he awake, and in the harsh busy world; or was it the
apparition of au over-excited imagination, brooding too constantly on
one fond idea, on which he now gazed so fixedly? Was this some spirit?
Would that she would speak again! Would that those sealed lips would
part and utter but one word, would but again call him 'Father,' and he
asked no more!

'Father!' to be called 'Father' by one whom he could not name, by one
over whom he mused in solit