nah," began the boy, "what I have to say to you is even more
solemn than your words import."

"Ishmael, you frighten me."

"No, no; there is no cause of alarm."

"Why don't you tell me what has brought us here, then?"

"I am about to do so," said Ishmael solemnly. "Aunt Hannah, you have
often told me that she whose remains lie below us was a saint on earth
and is an angel in heaven!"

"Yes, Ishmael. I have told you so, and I have told you truly."

"Aunt Hannah, three years ago I asked you who was my father. You replied
by a blow. Well, I was but a boy then, and so of course you must have
thought that that was the most judicious answer you could give. But now,
Aunt Hannah, I am a young man, and I demand of you, Who was my father?"

"Ishmael, I cannot tell you!"

With a sharp cry of anguish the youth sprang up; but governing his
strong excitement he subsided to his seat, only gasping out the
question:

"In the name of Heaven, why can you not?"

Hannah's violent sobs were the only answer.

"Aunt Hannah! I know this much--that your name is Hannah Worth; that my
dear mother was your sister; that her name was Nora Worth; and that mine
is Ishmael Worth! Therefore I know that I bear yours and my mother's
maiden name! I always took it for granted that my father belonged to the
same family; that he was a relative, perhaps a cousin of my mother, and
that he bore the same name, and therefore did not in marrying my mother
give her a new one. That was what I always thought, Aunt Hannah; was I
right?"

Hannah sobbed on in silence.

"Aunt Hannah! by my mother's grave, I adjure you to answer me! Was I
right?"

"No, Ishmael, you were not!" wailed Hannah.

"Then I do not bear my father's name?"

"No."

"But only my poor mother's?"

"Yes."

"Oh, Heaven! how is that?"

"Because you have no legal right to your father's; because the only name
to which you have any legal right is your poor, wronged mother's!"

With a groan that seemed to rend body and soul asunder, Ishmael threw
himself upon his mother's grave.

"You said she was an angel! And I know that she was!" he cried, as soon
as he had recovered the power of speech.

"I said truly, and you know the truth!" wept Hannah.

"How, then, is it, that I, her son, cannot bear my father's name?"

"Ishmael, your mother was the victim of a false marriage!"

Ishmael sprang up from his recumbent posture, and gazed at his aunt with
a fierceness that pierced through t