replace the guilty son with a thing pure and innocent, as he had been
had he died in his cradle--a child to comfort your old age! Kneel,
Fanny, I have found you a father who will cherish you--(oh! you will,
sir, will you not?)--as he whom you may see no more!"

There was something in Morton's voice so solemn, that it awed and
touched both the old man and the infant; and Fanny, creeping to the
protector thus assigned to her, and putting her little hands confidingly
on his knees, said--

"Fanny will love you if papa wished it. Kiss Fanny."

"Is it his child--his?" said the blind man, sobbing. "Come to my heart;
here--here! O God, forgive me!" Morton did not think it right at that
moment to undeceive him with regard to the poor child's true connexion
with the deceased: and he waited in silence till Simon, after a burst of
passionate grief and tenderness, rose, and still clasping the child to
his breast, said--

"Sir, forgive me!--I am a very weak old man--I have many thanks to
give--I have much, too, to learn. My poor son! he did not die in
want,--did he?"

The particulars of Gawtrey's fate, with his real name and the various
aliases he had assumed, had appeared in the French journals, had been
partially copied into the English; and Morton had expected to have
been saved the painful narrative of that fearful death; but the utter
seclusion of the old man, his infirmity, and his estranged habits, had
shut him out from the intelligence that it now devolved on Philip to
communicate. Morton hesitated a little before he answered:

"It is late now; you are not yet prepared to receive this poor infant at
your home, nor to hear the details I have to state. I arrived in England
but to-day. I shall lodge in the neighbourhood, for it is dear to me.
If I may feel sure, then, that you will receive and treasure this sacred
and last deposit bequeathed to you by your unhappy son, I will bring my
charge to you to-morrow, and we will then, more calmly than we can now,
talk over the past."

"You do not answer my question," said Simon, passionately; "answer that,
and I will wait for the rest. They call me a miser! Did I send out my
only child to starve? Answer that!"

"Be comforted. He did not die in want; and he has even left some little
fortune for Fanny, which I was to place in your hands."

"And he thought to bribe the old miser to be human! Well--well--well--I
will go home."

"Lean on me!"

The dog leapt playfully on his ma