enabled me to bear and forbear more than otherwise would have been possible to my quick spirit, and my man's heart. My dear father! his death was happy—his home was saved—he never knew at what sacrifice to his son! He was gladdened by the first honors my youth achieved. He was resigned to my choice of a profession, which, though contrary to his antique prejudices, that allowed to the representative of the Darrells no profession but the sword, still promised the wealth which would secure his name from perishing. He was credulous of my future, as if I had uttered, not a vow, but a prediction. He had blessed my union, without forseeing its sorrows. He had embraced my first-born—true, it was a girl, but it was one link onward from ancestors to posterity. And almost his last words were these: 'You will restore the race—you will revive the name! and my son's children will visit the antiquary's grave, and learn gratitude to him for all that his idle lessons taught to your healthier vigor.' And I answered: 'Father, your line shall not perish from the land; and when I am rich and great, and lordships spread far round the lowly hall that your life ennobled, I will say to your grandchildren, "Honor ye and your son's sons, while a Darrell yet treads the earth—honor him to whom I owe every thought which nerved me to toil for what you who come after me may enjoy."'
"And so the old man, whose life had been so smileless, died smiling."
By this time Lionel had stolen Darrell's hand into his own—his heart swelling with childlike tenderness, and the tears rolling down his cheeks.
Darrell gently kissed his young kinsman's forehead, and, extricating himself from Lionel's clasp, paced the room, and spoke on while pacing it.
"I made, then, a promise; it is not kept. No child of mine survives to be taught reverence to my father's grave. My wedded life was not happy: its record needs no words. Of two children born to me, both are gone. My son went first. I had thrown my life's life into him—a boy of energy, of noble promise. 'Twas for him I began to build that baffled fabric—'Sepulchri immemor.' For him I bought, acre on acre, all the land within reach of Fawley—lands twelve miles distant. I had meant to fill up the intervening space—to buy out a mushroom Earl, whose woods and corn-fields lie between. I was scheming the purchase—scrawling on the county map—when they brought the news that the boy I had just taken back to school was dead—drowned bathing on a calm summer eve! No, Lionel. I must
