sion that he could not speak, but I
could feel his breast heave and throb like a child, that cries, but
sobs, and cannot cry it out.

I can neither express nor describe the joy that touched my very soul
when I found, for it was easy to discover that part, that he came not
as a stranger, but as a son to a mother, and indeed as a son who had
never before known what a mother of his own was; in short, we cried
over one another a considerable while, when at last he broke out first.
'My dear mother,' says he, 'are you still alive? I never expected to
have seen your face.' As for me, I could say nothing a great while.

After we had both recovered ourselves a little, and were able to talk,
he told me how things stood. As to what I had written to his father, he
told me he had not showed my letter to his father, or told him anything
about it; that what his grandmother left me was in his hands, and that
he would do me justice to my full satisfaction; that as to his father,
he was old and infirm both in body and mind; that he was very fretful
and passionate, almost blind, and capable of nothing; and he questioned
whether he would know how to act in an affair which was of so nice a
nature as this; and that therefore he had come himself, as well to
satisfy himself in seeing me, which he could not restrain himself from,
as also to put it into my power to make a judgment, after I had seen
how things were, whether I would discover myself to his father or no.

This was really so prudently and wisely managed, that I found my son
was a man of sense, and needed no direction from me. I told him I did
not wonder that his father was as he had described him, for that his
head was a little touched before I went away; and principally his
disturbance was because I could not be persuaded to conceal our
relation and to live with him as my husband, after I knew that he was
my brother; that as he knew better than I what his father's present
condition was, I should readily join with him in such measure as he
would direct; that I was indifferent as to seeing his father, since I
had seen him first, and he could not have told me better news than to
tell me that what his grandmother had left me was entrusted in his
hands, who, I doubted not, now he knew who I was, would, as he said, do
me justice. I inquired then how long my mother had been dead, and
where she died, and told so many particulars of the family, that I left
him no room to doubt the trut