red so easily an hour or two ago, but an imperial beauty, with
blushing cheeks and sparkling eyes, and lips sweetly parted in triumph,
and her whole face radiant with a look he could not quite read; for he
had never yet seen it on her: maternal pride.

He stared and stared from the child to her, in throbbing amazement.

"Us?" he gasped at last. And still his wonder-stricken eyes turned to
and fro.

Margaret was surprised in her turn, It was an age of impressions not
facts, "What!" she cried, "doth not a father know his own child? and a
man of God, too? Fie, Gerard, to pretend! nay, thou art too wise, too
good, not to have--why, I watched thee; and e'en now look at you twain!
'Tis thine own flesh and blood thou holdest to thine heart."

Clement trembled, "What words are these," he stammered, "this angel
mine?"

"Whose else? since he is mine."

Clement turned on the sleeping child, with a look beyond the power of
the pen to describe, and trembled all over, as his eyes seemed to absorb
the little love.

Margaret's eyes followed his. "He is not a bit like me," said she
proudly; "but oh, at whiles he is thy very image in little; and see this
golden hair. Thine was the very colour at his age; ask mother else. And
see this mole on his little finger; now look at thine own; there! 'Twas
thy mother let me weet thou wast marked so before him; and oh, Gerard,
'twas this our child found thee for me; for by that little mark on thy
finger I knew thee for his father, when I watched above thy window and
saw thee feed the birds." Here she seized the child's hand, and kissed
it eagerly, and got half of it into her mouth, Heaven knows how, "Ah!
bless thee, thou didst find thy poor daddy for her, and now thou hast
made us friends again after our little quarrel; the first, the last.
Wast very cruel to me but now, my poor Gerard, and I forgive thee; for
loving of thy child."

"Ah! ah! ah! ah! ah!" sobbed Clement, choking. And lowered by fasts,
and unnerved by solitude, the once strong man was hysterical, and nearly
fainting.

Margaret was alarmed, but having experience, her pity was greater than
her fear. "Nay, take not on so," she murmured soothingly, and put a
gentle hand upon his brow. "Be brave! So, so. Dear heart, thou art not
the first man that hath gone abroad and come back richer by a lovely
little self than he went forth. Being a man of God, take courage, and
say He sends thee this to comfort thee for what thou hast lost i