for his coming, when he appeared in the pathway with his
little guide. He advanced to meet them, and tenderly obliging the old
man to lean upon his arm, conducted him with slow and trembling steps
towards the house.

He repaired to her chamber, straight. Not finding what he had left
there, he returned with distracted looks to the room in which they were
assembled. From that, he rushed into the schoolmaster's cottage,
calling her name. They followed close upon him, and when he had vainly
searched it, brought him home.

With such persuasive words as pity and affection could suggest, they
prevailed upon him to sit among them and hear what they should tell
him. Then endeavouring by every little artifice to prepare his mind
for what must come, and dwelling with many fervent words upon the happy
lot to which she had been removed, they told him, at last, the truth.
The moment it had passed their lips, he fell down among them like a
murdered man.

For many hours, they had little hope of his surviving; but grief is
strong, and he recovered.

If there be any who have never known the blank that follows death--the
weary void--the sense of desolation that will come upon the strongest
minds, when something familiar and beloved is missed at every turn--the
connection between inanimate and senseless things, and the object of
recollection, when every household god becomes a monument and every
room a grave--if there be any who have not known this, and proved it by
their own experience, they can never faintly guess how, for many days,
the old man pined and moped away the time, and wandered here and there
as seeking something, and had no comfort.

Whatever power of thought or memory he retained, was all bound up in
her. He never understood, or seemed to care to understand, about his
brother. To every endearment and attention he continued listless. If
they spoke to him on this, or any other theme--save one--he would hear
them patiently for awhile, then turn away, and go on seeking as before.

On that one theme, which was in his and all their minds, it was
impossible to touch. Dead! He could not hear or bear the word. The
slightest hint of it would throw him into a paroxysm, like that he had
had when it was first spoken. In what hope he lived, no man could
tell; but that he had some hope of finding her again--some faint and
shadowy hope, deferred from day to day, and making him from day to day
more sick and sore at heart--