dying wish that you should receive all the advantages of education and travel. Your life has been, for the most part, spent in the toil of study, and I knew you needed an interval of relaxation and retirement to reïnvigorate your mental and physical energies. So I brought you to share the seclusion of my hermitage for a while. Grateful as has been your presence to me, I should wrong you, and forfeit the promise given your parents on their deathbeds, if I encouraged or permitted this retirement for a longer period than is necessary for your restoration to health and vigor. You know I am your guardian, Edgar. The fortune left for you by your father was entrusted to my care till you should attain a suitable age to have it transferred to your own hands, and ample provisions were made for your education and instruction in the painter's art. Do you see what I am coming at, Edgar?" he added, pausing in his discourse, and directing his gaze toward the boy, who sat listening attentively to his uncle's words. 

 "No, Uncle Ralph," answered the lad; "I don't know as I do, unless you are going to send me away from you to some distant school;" and his voice trembled as he spoke. 

 "Would you dislike to leave me, my boy?" said the hermit, a tear dropping from his melancholy eye. 

 "Ah, that would I!" returned Edgar, "for I have none to care for me in the wide world, save you." 

 "Pshaw, pshaw, boy! don't prate in that way, with your bright, curly locks," said the man, laying his thin hand softly on the youth's light, clustering hair. "When these locks are gray, and you have toiled and labored for fame and honors never gained, or that burned and furrowed the brow that wore them; when you have engaged in the world's weary strife and sunk by the wayside worn and disheartened by the contest; when friends have proved false;"—here the hermit's voice grew deeper and more vehement—"and when those who professed for you the fondest love turn coldly away to mock and scorn at your deep devotion, then, then, my boy, you will exclaim in bitterness, 'there are none to care for me!'" 

 He paused, and bowed his face on his hands. Edgar longed to comfort him, but knew not what to say. 

 The night wind roared solemnly without, the fire burned low on the rude hearth, and the little apartment, but illy protected from the searching blasts, grew chilly. Still the hermit sat silent, his bowed head resting between his small, attenuated hands. Edgar rose, brought the long overcoat and spread it over his shoulders, as a protection 

 Prev. P 57/360 next