mes. Come away
from the place, poor Clive! Come sit with your orphan little boy; and
bear him on your knee, and hug him to your heart. He seems yours now,
and all a father's love may pour out upon him. Until this hour, Fate
uncontrollable and homely tyranny had separated him from you.

It was touching to see the eagerness and tenderness with which the great
strong man now assumed the guardianship of the child, and endowed him
with his entire wealth of affection. The little boy now ran to Clive
whenever he came in, and sat for hours prattling to him. He would take
the boy out to walk, and from our windows we could see Clive's black
figure striding over the snow in St. James's Park, the little man
trotting beside him, or perched on his father's shoulder. My wife and
I looked at them one morning as they were making their way towards the
City.

"He has inherited that loving heart from his father," Laura said; "and
he is paying over the whole property to his son."

Clive, and the boy sometimes with him, used to go daily to Grey Friars,
where the Colonel still lay ill. After some days the fever which had
attacked him left him, but left him so weak and enfeebled that he
could only go from his bed to the chair by his fireside. The season
was exceedingly bitter, the chamber which he inhabited was warm and
spacious; it was considered unadvisable to move him until he had
attained greater strength, and till warmer weather. The medical men of
the House hoped he might rally in spring. My friend, Dr. Goodenough,
came to him; he hoped too: but not with a hopeful face. A chamber,
luckily vacant, hard by the Colonel's, was assigned to his friends,
where we sate when we were too many for him. Besides his customary
attendant, he had two dear and watchful nurses, who were almost always
with him--Ethel and Madame de Florac, who had passed many a faithful
year by an old man's bedside; who would have come, as to a work of
religion, to any sick couch, much more to this one, where he lay for
whose life she would once gladly have given her own.

But our Colonel, we all were obliged to acknowledge, was no more our
friend of old days. He knew us again, and was good to every one round
him, as his wont was; especially when Boy came, his old eyes lighted up
with simple happiness, and, with eager trembling hands, he would seek
under his bedclothes, or the pockets of his dressing-gown, for toys or
cakes, which he had caused to be purchased for his g