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As Gertrude's eyes, after greedily devouring the manuscript,
fell upon its closing words, she sprung to her feet, and the next
instant her little room (the floor strewed with the scattered sheets,
which had dropped from her lap as she rose) is left vacant. She
has flown down the stairease, escaped through the hall-door, and,
bounding over a lawn at the back of the house, now wet with the
evening dew, she approaches the summer-house from the opposite
entrance to that at which Mr. Amory, with folded arms and a
fixed countenance, is watching for her coming.

So noiseless is her light step, that, before he is conscious of her
presence, she has thrown herself upon his bosom, and, her whole
frame trembling with the vehemence of long-suppressed and now
uncontrolled agitation, she bursts into a torrent of passionate
tears, interrupted only by frequent sobs, so deep and so exhausting
that her father, with his arms folded tightly around her, and
clasping her so closely to his heart that she feels its irregular beating,
endeavors to still the tempest of her grief, whispering softly,
as to an infant, “Hush! hush, my child! you frighten me!”

And, gradually soothed by his gentle earesses, her excitement
subsides, and she is able to lift her face to his, and smile upon him
through her tears. They stand thus for many minutes, in a
silence that speaks far more than words. Wrapped in the folds
of his heavy cloak to preserve her from the everning air, and still
encircled in his strong embrace, Gertrude feels that their union of
spirit is not less complete; while the long-banished man, who for

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years has never felt the sweet influence of a kindly smile, glows
with a melting tenderness which hardening solitude has not had
the power to subdue.

Again and again the moon retires behind a cloud, and peeps
out to find them still in the attitude in which she saw them last.
At length, as she gains a broad and open expanse, and looks
clearly down, Mr. Amory, lifting his daughter's face, and gazing
into her glistening eyes, while he gently strokes the disordered
hair from her forehead, asks, in an accent of touching appeal,
“You will love me, then?”

“O, I do! I do!” exclaimed Gertrude, sealing his lips with
kisses.

His hitherto unmoved countenance relaxes at this fervent assurance.
He bows his head upon her shoulder, and the strong man
weeps.

Not long, however. Her self-possession all restored at seeing
him thus overcome, Gertrude places her hand in his, and startles
him from his position by the firm and decided tone with which she
whispers, “Come!”

“Whither?” exclaims he, looking up in surprise.

“To Emily.”

With a half shudder, and a mournful shake of the head, he
retreats, instead of advancing in the direction in which she would
lead him.—“I cannot.”

“But she waits for you. She, too, weeps and longs and prays
for your coming.”

“Emily!—you know not what you are saying, my child!”

“Indeed, indeed, my father, it is you who are deceived. Emily
does not hate you; she never did. She believed you dead long
ago; but your voice, though heard but once, has half robbed her
of her reason, so wholly, so entirely does she love you still.
Come, and she will tell you, better than I can, what a wretched
mistake has made martyrs of you both.”

Emily, who had heard the voice of Willie Sullivan, as he bade
Gertrude farewell on the door-step, and rightly conjectured that it
was he, forbore making any inquiries for the absent girl at the
tea-table, and, thinking it probable that she preferred to remain

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undisturbed, retired to the sitting-room at the conclusion of the
meal, where (as Mr. Graham sought the library) she remained
alone for more than an hour.

It was a delightful, social-looking room. The fire still burned
brightly, sending forth a ruddy glow, and (as the evening was
unusually chilly for the season) rendering the temperature of the
great old-fashioned parlor highly agreeable. There were candles
under the mirror, but they did not give light enough to destroy
the pleasant effect of the shadows which the fire-light made upon
the wall and about the couch where Emily was reclining.

The invalid girl, if we may call her such (for, in spite of ill
health, she still retained much of the freshness and all the loveliness
of her girlhood), had, by chance, chosen such a position,
opposite to the cheerful blaze, that its flickering light played about
her face, and brought to view the rich and unwonted bloom which
inward excitement had called up in her usually pale countenance.
The exquisite and refined taste which always made Emily's dress
an index to the soft purity of her character was never more
strikingly developed than when she wore, as on the present occasion,
a flowing robe of white cashmere, fastened at the waist with
a silken girdle, and with full, drapery sleeves, whose lining and
border of snowy silk could only have been rivalled by the delicate
hand and wrist which had escaped from beneath their folds, and
somewhat nervously played with the heavy crimson fringe of a
shawl, worn in the chilly dining-room, and now thrown carelessly
over the arm of the sofa.

Supporting herself upon her elbow, she sat with her head bent
forward, and, as she watched the images reflected in the glass of
memory, one who knew her not, and was unaware of her want of
sight, might have believed that, looking forth from her long,
drooping eyelashes, she were tracing imaginary forms among the
shining embers, so intently was her face bent in that direction.

Occasionally, as the summer wind sighed among the branches
of the trees, causing them to beat lightly against the window-pane,
she would lift her head from the hand on which it rested, and,
gracefully arching her slender throat, incline in a listening attitude;
and then, as the trifling nature of the sound betrayed itself,

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she would sink, with a low sigh, into her former somewhat listless
position. Once Mrs. Prime opened the door, looked around the
room in search of the housekeeper, and, not finding her, retreated
across the passage, saying to herself, as she did so, “Law! dear
sakes alive! I wish she only had eyes now, to see how like a picter
she looks!”

At length a low, quick bark from the house-dog once more
attracted her attention, and in a moment steps were heard crossing
the piazza.

Before they had gained the door, Emily was standing upright,
straining her ear to catch the sound of every foot-fall; and, when
Gertrude and Mr. Amory entered, she looked more like a statue
than a living figure, as, with clasped hands, parted lips, and one
foot slightly advanced, she silently awaited their approach.

One glance at Emily's face, another at that of her agitated
father, and Gertrude was gone. She saw the completeness of their
mutual recognition, and, with instinctive delicacy, forbore to mar
by her presence the sacredness of so holy an interview.

As the door closed upon her retreating figure, Emily parted her
clasped hands, stretched them forth into the dim vacancy, and
murmured “Philip!”

He seized them between both of his, and, with one step forward,
fell upon his knees. As he did so, the half-fainting girl
dropped upon the seat behind her. Mr. Amory bowed his head
upon the hands, which, still held tightly between his own, now
rested on her lap; and, hiding his face upon her slender fingers,
tremblingly uttered her name.

“The grave has given up its dead!” exclaimed Emily. “My
God, I thank thee!” and, extricating her hands from his convulsive
grasp, she flung her arms around his neck, rested her head
upon his bosom, and whispered, in a voice half choked with
emotion, “Philip!—dear, dear Philip! am I dreaming, or have
you come back again?”

The conventional rules, the enforced restrictions, which often
set limits to the outbursts of natural feeling, had no existence for
one so wholly the child of nature as Emily. She and Philip had
loved each other in their childhood; before that childhood was

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fully past, they had parted; and as children they met again.
During the lapse of many years, in which, shut out from the
world, she had lived among the cherished memories of the past,
she had been safe from worldly contagion, and had retained all
the guileless simplicity of girlhood,—all the freshness of her
spring-time; and Philip, who had never willingly bound himself
by any ties save those imposed upon him by circumstance and
necessity, felt his boyhood come rushing upon him once more, as,
with Emily's soft hand resting on his head, she blessed Heaven for
his safe return. She could not see how time had silvered his hair,
and sobered and shaded the face that she loved. Whether he
came in the shape of the fiery-eyed youth that she saw him last,
the middle-aged man, with hoary hair, whose years the curious
found it hard to determine, or the glorified angel which she had
pictured to herself in every dream of heaven, it was all alike to
one whose world was a world of spirits.

And to him, as he beheld the face he had half dreaded to
encounter beaming with the holy light of sympathy and love, the
blind girl's countenance seemed encircled with a halo not of earth.
And, therefore, this union had in it less of earth than heaven.
Had they wakened on the other side the grave, and soul met soul
in that happy land where the long-parted meet, their rapture could
scarcely have been more pure, their happiness more unalloyed.

Not until, seated beside each other, with their hands still fondly
clasped, Philip had heard from Emily's lips the history of her
hopes, her fears, her prayers and her despair, and she, while
listening to the sad incidents of his life, had dropped upon the
hand she held many a kiss and tear of sympathy, did either fully
realize the mercy, so long delayed, so fully accorded now, which
promised even on earth to crown their days.

Emily wept at the tale of Lucy's trials and her early death;
and when she learned that it was hers and Philip's child whom
she had taken to her heart, and fostered with the truest affection,
she sent up a silent prayer of gratitude that it had been allotted
to her apparently bereaved and darkened destiny to fulfil so
blest a mission.

“If I could love her more, dear Philip,” exclaimed she, while

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the tears trickled down her cheeks, “I would do so, for your
sake, and that of her sweet, innocent, suffering mother.”

“And you forgive me, then, Emily?” said Philip, as, both
having finished their sad recitals of the past, they gave themselves
up to the sweet reflection of their present joy.

“Forgive?—O, Philip! what have I to forgive?”

“The deed that locked you in prison darkness,” he mournfully
replied.

“Philip!” exclaimed Emily, in a reproachful tone, “could you
for one moment believe that I attributed that to you?—that I
blamed you, for an instant, even in my secret thought?”

“Not willingly, I am sure, dear Emily. But, O, you have
forgotten what I can never forget,—that in your time of anguish,
not only the obtruding thought, but the lip that gave utterance to
it, proclaimed how your soul refused to pity and forgive the cruel
hand that wrought you so much woe!”

“You cruel, Philip! Never, even in my wild frenzy, did I so
abuse and wrong you. If my unfilial heart sinfully railed against
the cruel injustice of my father, it was never guilty of such
treachery towards you.”

“That fiendish woman lied, then, when she told me that you
shuddered at my very name?”

“If I shuddered, Philip, it was because my whole nature
recoiled at the thought of the wrong that you had sustained; and
O, believe me, if she gave you any other assurance than of my
continued love, it was because she labored under a sad and
unhappy error.”

“Good heavens!” ejaculated Philip. “How wickedly have I
been deceived!”

“Not wickedly,” replied Emily. “Mrs. Ellis, with all her
stern formality, was, in that instance, the victim of circumstances.
She was a stranger among us, and believed you other than you
were; but, had you seen her a few weeks later, sobbing over her
share in the unhappy transaction which drove you to desperation,
and, as we then supposed, to death, you would have felt, as I
did, that we had greatly misjudged her in return, and that she
carried a heart of flesh beneath a stony disguise. The bitterness

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of her grief astonished me at the time; for I never until now
had reason to suspect that it was mingled with remorse at the
recollection of her own harshness. Let us forget, however, the
sad events of the past, and trust that the loving hand which has
thus far shaped our course has but afflicted us in mercy.”

“In mercy?” exclaimed Philip. “What mercy does my past
experience give evidence of, or your life of everlasting darkness?
Can you believe it a loving hand which made me the ill-fated
instrument, and you the life-long sufferer, from one of the dreariest
misfortunes that can afflict humanity?”

“Speak not of my blindness as a misfortune,” answered Emily;
“I have long ceased to think it such. It is only through the
darkness of the night that we discern the lights of heaven, and
only when shut out from earth that we enter the gates of Paradise.
With eyes to see the wonderful working of nature and
nature's God, I nevertheless closed them to the evidences of
almighty love that were around me on every side. While enjoying
the beautiful and glorious gifts that were showered on my
pathway, I forgot to thank and praise the Giver; but, with an
ungrateful heart, walked sinfully and selfishly on, little dreaming
of the beguiling and deceitful snares which entangle the footsteps
of youth.

“And therefore did He, who is ever over us for good, arrest
with fatherly hand the child who was wandering from the only
road that leads to peace; and, though the discipline of his
chastening rod was sudden and severe, mercy still tempered justice.
From the tomb of my buried joys sprang hopes that will
bloom in immortality. From the clouds and the darkness broke
forth a glorious light. What was hidden from my outer sight
became manifest to my awakened soul, and even on earth my
troubled spirit gained its eternal rest. Then grieve not, dear
Philip, over the fate that, in reality, is far from sad; but rejoice
with me in the thought of that blessed and not far distant awakening,
when, with restored and beatified vision, I shall stand
before God's throne, in full view of that glorious Presence, from
which, but for the guiding light which has burst upon my spirit

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through the veil of earthly darkness, I might have been eternally
shut out.”

As Emily finished speaking, and Philip, gazing with awe upon
the rapt expression of her soul-illumined face, beheld the triumph
of an immortal mind, and pondered on the might, the majesty and
power, of the influence wrought by simple piety, the door of the
room opened abruptly, and Mr. Graham entered.

The sound of the well-known footstep disturbed the soaring
thoughts of both, and the flush of exeitement which had mounted
into Emily's cheeks subsided into more than her wonted paleness,
as Philip, rising slowly and deliberately from his seat at her side,
stood face to face with her father.

Mr. Graham approached with the puzzled and scrutinizing air
of one who finds himself called upon in the character of a host
to greet a visitor who, though an apparent stranger, may possibly
have claims to recognition, and glanced at his daughter as
if hoping she would relieve the awkwardness by an introduction.
But the agitated Emily maintained perfect silence, and every
feature of Philip's countenance remained immovable as Mr. Graham
slowly came forward.

He had advanced within one step of the spot where Philip
stood waiting to receive him, when, struck by the stern look and
attitude of the latter, he stopped short, gazed one moment into
the eagle eyes of his step-son, then staggered, grasped at the
mantel-piece, and would have fallen; but Philip, starting forward,
helped him to his arm-chair, which stood opposite to the
sofa.

And yet no word was spoken. At length Mr. Graham, who,
having fallen into the seat, sat still gazing into the face of Mr.
Amory, ejaculated, in a tone of wondering excitement, “Philip
Amory! O, my God!”

“Yes, father,” exclaimed Emily, suddenly rising and grasping
her father's arm. “It is Philip; he, whom we have so long
believed among the dead, restored to us in health and safety!”

Mr. Graham rose from his chair, and, leaning heavily on Emily's
shoulder, again approached Mr. Amory, who, with folded arms,
stood fixed as marble. His step tottered with a feebleness never

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before observable in the sturdy frame of the old man, and the
hand which he extended to Philip was marked by an unusual
tremulousness.

But Philip did not offer to receive the proffered hand, or reply
by word to the rejected salutation.

Mr. Graham turned towards Emily, and, forgetting that this
neglect was shut from her sight, exclaimed, half-bitterly, halfsadly,
“I cannot blame him! God knows I wronged the boy!”

“Wronged him!” cried Philip, in a voice so deep as to be
almost fearful. “Yes, wronged him, indeed! Blighted his life,
crushed his youth, half-broke his heart, and wholly blasted his
reputation!”

“No,” exclaimed Mr. Graham, who had quailed beneath these
accusations, until he reached the final one. “Not that, Philip!
not that! I never harmed you there. I discovered my error
before I had doomed you to infamy in the eyes of one of your
fellow-men.”

“You acknowledge, then, the error?”

“I do, I do! I imputed to you the deed which proved to have
been accomplished through the agency of my most confidential
clerk. I learned the truth almost immediately; but too late,
alas! to recall you. Then came the news of your death, and I
felt that the injury had been irreparable. But it was not strange,
Philip; you must allow that. Archer had been in my employment
more than twenty years. I had a right to believe him trustworthy.”

“No! O, no!” replied Philip. “It was nothing strange that,
a crime committed, you should have readily ascribed it to me.
You thought me capable only of evil.”

“I was unjust, Philip,” answered Mr. Graham, with an attempt
to rally his dignity, “but I had some cause,—I had some
cause.”

“Perhaps so,” responded Philip; “I am willing to grant that.”

“Let us shake hands upon it, then,” said Mr. Graham, “and
endeavor to forget the past.”

Philip did not again refuse to accede to this request, though

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there was but little warmth or cagerness in the manner of his
compliance.

Mr. Graham, seeming now to think the matter quite ended,
looked relieved, and as if he had shaken off a burden which had
been weighing upon his conscience for years (for he had a conscience,
though not a very tender one); and, subsiding into his arm-chair,
begged to learn the particulars of Philip's experience during
the last twenty years.

The outline of the story was soon told; Mr. Graham listening
to it with attention, and inquiring into its particulars with an
interest which proved that, during a lengthened period of regret
and remorse, his feelings had sensibly softened towards the step-son
with every memory of whom there had come to his heart a
pang of self-reproach.

Mr. Amory was unable to afford any satisfactory explanation
of the report of his own death, which had been confidently affirmed
by Dr. Jeremy's correspondent at Rio. Upon a comparison of
dates, however, it seemed probable that the doctor's agent had
obtained this information from Philip's employer, who, for some
weeks previous to his own death, had every reason to believe that
the young man had perished of the infection prevailing in the
low and unhealthy region to which he had been despatched.

To Philip himself it was an almost equal matter of wonder
that his friends should ever have obtained knowledge of his flight
and destination. But this was more easily accounted for, since
the vessel in which he had embarked returned directly to Boston,
and there were among her crew and officers those who had ample
means of replying to the inquiries which the benevolent doctor had
set on foot some months before, and which, being accompanied by
the offer of a liberal reward, had not yet ceased to attract the
attention of the public.

Notwithstanding the many strange and romantic incidents which
were unfolding themselves, none seemed to produce so great an
impression upon Mr. Graham's mind as the singular circumstance
that the child who had been reared under his roof, and endeared
herself to him, in spite of some clashing of interests and opinions,
should prove to be Philip's daughter. As he left the room, at

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the conclusion of the tale, and again sought the solitude of his
library, he muttered to himself more than once, “Singular coincidence!
Very singular! Very!”

Hardly had he departed, before another door was timidly
opened, and Gertrude looked cautiously in.

Her father went quickly towards her, and, passing his arm
around her waist, drew her towards Emily, and clasped them both
in a long and silent embrace.

“Philip,” exclaimed Emily, “can you still doubt the mercy and
love which have spared us for such a meeting?”

“O, Emily!” replied he, “I am deeply grateful. Teach me
how and where to bestow my tribute of praise.”

On the hour of sweet communion which succeeded we forbear
to dwell;—the silent rapture of Emily, the passionately-expressed
joy of Philip, or the trusting, loving glances which Gertrude cast-upon
both.

It was nearly midnight when Mr. Amory rose, and announced
his intention to depart. Emily, who had not thought of his
leaving the spot which she hoped he would now consider his home,
entreated him to remain; and Gertrude, with her eyes, joined in
the eager petition. But he persisted in his resolution with a firmness
and seriousness which proved how vain would be the attempt
to shake it.

“Philip,” said Emily, at length, laying her hand upon his arm,
“you have not yet forgiven my father.”

She had divined his thoughts. He shrank under her reproachful
tones, and made no answer.

“But you will, dear Philip,—you will,” continued she, in a
pleading voice.

He hesistated, then glanced at her once more, and replied, “I
will, dearest Emily, I will—in time.”

When he had gone, Gertrude lingered a moment at the door,
to watch his retreating figure, just visible in the light of the waning
moon; then returned to the parlor, drawing a long breath and
saying, “O, what a day this has been!” but checked herself, at
the sight of Emily, who, kneeling by the sofa, with clasped hands,

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uplifted face, and with her white garments sweeping the floor,
looked the very impersonation of purity and prayer.

Throwing one arm around her neck, Gertrude knelt on the floor
beside her, and together they sent up to the throne of God the
incense of thanksgiving and praise!

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