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marry a poor man, but I was not ready to let my lover run the risk of becoming a poor man by marrying me a few months or even years sooner. Were we not happy enough in all conscience, seeing each other every day, and mostly all day long? No doubt people talked, but why not let them talk! The mind of the many is not the mind of God. John confessed that society itself was the merest oyster of a divinity. He argued, however, that most likely my uncle was keeping close until he saw us married. I answered that he would be as unwilling to expose us to the revenge of our mother through him, after we were married as before; anyhow I would not consent to be happier than we were, without my uncle to share in the happiness.

CHAPTER XXXI.

MY UNCLE COMES HOME.

TIME went on, and it was now the depth of a cold, miserable winter. I remember the day so well! It was a black day. There was such a thickness of snow in the air that what light got through looked astray as if lost in a London fog; it was not like an honest darkness of the atmosphere, bred in its own bounds. But while the light asted, the snow did not fall. I went about the house doing what had to be done, and what I could find to do wondering that John did not come.

His horse had again fallen lame- this time through an accident which made it necessary to stay with the poor animal long after his usual time for starting to come to me. When he did start, it was on foot, with the short winter afternoon closing in. But John knew the moor by this time as well as I did, and that is saying a good deal. It was quite dark when he drew near the house, which he generally entered through the wilderness and the garden. The snow had begun at last, and was coming down in deliberate earnest. It would lie feet deep over the moor before the morning. He was just thinking what a dreary tramp home it would be by the road, for the wind was threatening to wake, and in a snow-wind the moor was a place to be avoided when he struck his foot against something soft in the path his own feet had worn to the wilderness, and fell over it. A groan followed. John rose with the miserable feeling of having hurt some creature. Dropping again on his knees to discover what it was, he found a man almost covered with snow, and nearly insensible. He swept the snow off him, contrived to get him on his back,

and brought him round to the door, for the fence would have been awkward to cross with him. It was rather difficult indeed to carry him to the door, not because of his weight, but because of his length, and the roughness of the ground. Just as I began to be really uneasy at his prolonged absence, there he was, with a man on his back, apparently lifeless!

I did not stop to stare or question, but made haste to help him. His burden was slipping sideways from his back, so we lowered it on a hall chair, and then carried the man in between us, I holding his legs. The moment a ray of light fell upon his face, I saw it was my uncle.

I just saved myself from a scream. My heart stopped, then bumped as if it would break through. I turned sick and then cold. John laid his part of the burden on the sofa, but I held on to the legs half unconsciously. In a moment, however, I came to myself, and could help Martha. She said never a word, but was all there, looking in the face of her cousin with doglike devotion, but never stopping an instant to gaze. We got him some brandy first, then some hot milk, and then some soup. He refused nothing we offered him. We did not ask him a single question, but the moment he revived, carried him up and laid him in bed. Once he cast his eyes about, and gave a sigh, as if of relief to find himself in his own room, then went off into a light doze, which, broken with starts and half-wakings, lasted until next day about noon. Either John (or Martha or I was by his bedside all the time, so that he should not wake without seeing one of us by him.

But the sad thing was, that, when he did wake, he did not seem to come to himself. He uttered not a word, but just lay and looked out of his eyes, if, indeed it was more than his eyes themselves that looked, if indeed he looked out of them at all!

"He has overdone his strength," we said to each other. "He has not been taking care of himself! And then to lie perhaps hours in the snow! It's a wonder he's alive!"

"He's nothing but skin and bone," said Martha. "It will take weeks to get him up again! And just look at his clothes! How ever did he come nigh such! They're fit only for a beggar! They must have knocked him down and stripped him! Look at his boots!" she said, and stroked them with her hands. never recover it!"

"He will," I said.

"He'll

"Here are three of

us to take care of him! He'll soon be himself again now that we have him!" But my heart was like to break at sight of him.

"He would get well much quicker," said John, "if only we could tell him we were married."

"It will do just as well to invite him to the wedding," I answered. "I will not have it until he is able to give me to you, John."

"You are right," said John. "And we won't ask him anything, or even refer to anything, till he seems to want to hear about things."

Days went and came, and still he did not appear to know quite where he was; or, if he knew, he seemed so content with knowing it, that he did not want to know anything more in heaven or earth. We grew very anxious about him. He did not heed a word his old friend Dr. Southwell said. His mind seemed utterly exhausted. The doctor justified John's more mature resolve, saying he must not be troubled with questions, or the least attempt to rouse his memory. He must be left to himself like a baby.

John was now almost constantly with us. One day I asked him whether his mother took any notice of his being now so seldom at home at night. He answered she did not; and but for knowing her ways, he would imagine she knew nothing at all about him; he hardly doubted, however, that she made sure every day of where he

was.

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What does she do all day long?" I asked.

"Goes over her books, I imagine," he answered. "She knows the hour is at hand when she must give account of her stewardship, and she is getting ready to meet it. That is what I suppose, at least; but she gives me no trouble now, and I have no wish to trouble her."

"Have you no hope of ever being on filial terms with her again?" I said.

"There are few things more unlikely," he replied.

I was a little troubled, notwithstanding my knowledge of her, and the way in which I felt toward her, that he should regard a total alienation from his mother with such indifference. I could not, however, balance the account between them. If much was owing to her merely because she was his mother, how much was she not in debt to her child, who had done him the terrible wrong of not being lovable? In my heart I blessed the heavenly Father, that he was just what he was.

But oh, what a damping oppression it was that my uncle had returned so different! We were glad to have him, but how gladly would we not have let him go again to be restored to himself, even should we never more rest our eyes upon him in this world! Dearly as I loved John, it seemed to me nothing could make me happy while my uncle remained as he was. It was as the gripe of a cold hand on my heart to see him such impassable miles from me. I could not get near him. It was like what it would be to lose God out of my world. I went about all day with a sense

not merely of loss, but of a loss that gnawed at me with a sickening pain. He never said little one to me now! he never looked in my eyes as if he loved me! He was very gentle, never complained, but lay there with a dead question in his eyes. We all feared his mind was utterly gone.

By degrees his health returned, but neither his memory, nor his interest in life, seemed to come back. Yet he had ever a far-away look in his eyes, and would start and turn at every opening of the door. He took to wandering about the yard and the stable, and the cow-house; would look for an hour at some one animal in its stall; would watch the men thrashing the corn, or twisting straw ropes; but he never cared to ride. When Dr. Southwell sent home his horse, it was in great hope that the sight of Death would wake him up; that he would recognize his old companion, jump on his back, and be well again; but my uncle only looked at him with some faint admiration, went round him and examined him as if he were a horse he thought of buying, then turned away, and took no more notice of him. Death was troubled at his treatment of him. He showed him all the old atten tion, used every equine blandishment he knew, but meeting with no response, turned slowly away, and walked to his stable. Dr. Southwell would gladly have bought him, but neither John nor I would hear of parting with him; he was almost a portion of his master. Then my uncle might come to himself any moment, and how could we look him in the face, if Death was gone from us! Besides, we loved the horse for his own sake as well as my uncle's, and John would be but too glad to ride him.

My uncle would wander over the house, up and down, but seemed to prefer the little drawing-room to any other; I made it my special business to keep a good fire there. He never went up to the study; never opened the door in the chimney

corner. He seldom spoke, and seldomer | looked at each other, and how glad were to me than to any other. It was a dreary our hearts! My uncle was fast coming to time! Our very souls had longed for him himself. It was like watching the dead back, and this is how he came ! grow alive.

Sorely I wept over the change that had passed upon the good man. He must have received some terrible shock! It was just as if his mother, John said, had got hold of him, and put a knife in his heart! It was well, however, that he was not wandering about the heath, exposed to the elements! and there was yet time for many a good thing to come. Where one must wait, one can wait.

This John had to learn, for, say what he would, the idea of marrying while my uncle was in such a plight, was to me unendurable.

CHAPTER XXXII.

TWICE TWO IS ONE.

One day he proposed to hire a carriage and a good pair of horses, and drive to Versailles to see the palace. We agreed, and all went well. I had not, in my wildest dreams, imagined a place so grand and beautiful. We wandered about it for hours, and were just tired enough to begin thinking with pleasure of the start homeward, when we found ourselves in a very long, straight corridor. I was walking alone, a little ahead of the rest; my uncle was coming along next, but a good way behind me; a few paces behind my uncle, came John with Martha, to whom he was more scrupulously attentive than to myself.

In front of me was a door, dividing the corridor in two, apparently filled with plain plate-glass, to break the draught without obscuring the effect of the great length of the corridor, which stretched away as far on the other side as we had come on this. I paused and stood aside, leaning against the wall to wait for my uncle, and gazing listlessly out of a win

THE spring came, but brought little change in the condition of my uncle. In the month of May Dr. Southwell advised our taking him abroad. When we mentioned it to him, he passed his hand wearily over his forehead as if he felt something wrong there, and made no re-dow opposite me. But as my uncle came ply. We went on with our preparations, and when the day arrived he made no objection to going.

We were an odd party: John and I, bachelor and spinster; my uncle, a silent, moody man, who did whatever we asked him; and the still, open-eyed Martha Moon, who, I sometimes think, understood more about it all than any of us. I could talk a little French, and John a good deal of German; and when we got to Paris, we found my uncle considerably at home there. When he cared to speak, he spoke like a native, and was never at a loss for word or phrase.

It was he, indeed, who took us to a quiet little hotel he knew; and when we were comfortably settled in it, he began to take the lead in all our plans. By degrees he assumed the care and guidance of the whole party; and so well did he carry out what he had silently, perhaps almost unconsciously undertaken, that we conceived the greatest hopes of the result to himself. A mind might lie quiescent so long as it was ministered to, and hedged from cares and duties, and wake up when something was required of it. No one would have thought anything amiss with my uncle, that heard him giving his orders for the day, or acting cicerone to the little company- there for his sake, though he did not know it. How often John and I 3797

LIVING AGE.

VOL. LXXIII.

nearer to open the door for us, I happened to cast my eyes again upon it, and saw my uncle coming in the opposite direction, when I concluded of course that I had made a mistake about the door, taking it for a clear plate of glass instead of a mirror reflecting the corridor behind me. I looked back at my uncle with a little anxiety. My reader may remember that, when he came to fetch me from Rising he started, encountering a mirror at unawares, and nearly fell; from this occur. rence and from the absence of mirrors about the house, I had imagined in his life some painful story connected with a mirror.

Once again I saw him start, and then stand like stone. Almost immediately a marvellous light overspread his countenance, and with a cry he bounded forward. I looked again at the mirror, and there I saw the self-same light-irradiated countenance coming straight, as was natural, to meet that of which it was the reflection. Then all at once the solid foundations of fact melted into vaporous dream, for I saw the two figures come together, the one in the mirror, the other in the world, and just as I thought my uncle of the world would shatter the mirror, I saw the two fall into each other's arms. I heard also two voices weeping and sobbing, as the substance and the shadow embraced.

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Two men had for a moment been deceived like myself; neither glass nor mirror was there only the frame from which a swing-door had been removed for repair. The two walked right into the arms each of the other, whom he had at first taken for himself.

They paused in their weeping, held each other at arm's length, and gazed as in mute appeal for yet better assurance; then smiled like two suns from opposing rain clouds, fell again each on the other's neck, and wept anew. Neither had killed the other. Neither had lost the other. The world had been a graveyard, and was a paradise!

We stood aside in reverence. Martha Moon's eyes glowed, but she manifested no surprise. John and I gazed in utter bewilderment. The two embraced each other, kissed and hugged and patted each other, wept and murmured and laughed, then all at once, with one great sigh between them, grew aware of witnesses. Had they not been too happy to blush, they could not have blushed, so red were they with the fire of heaven's own delight. Utterly unembarrassed they turned towards us wherewith came a fresh astonishment, an old joy out of the treasure of the divine householder: the uncle of the mirror came straight to me, cried, "Ah, little one!" took me in his arms, and embraced me with all the old tenderness, and a joy such as I had never before beheld upon human countenance. Then I knew that my own old uncle was all right, the same as ever I had known him since I used to go to sleep in his

arms.

The jubilation that followed, it is impossible for me to describe; and my husband, who approves of all I have yet written, begs me not to attempt an adumbration of it.

"It would be a pity," he says, "to end a race with a tumble down at the winningpost."

CHAPTER XXXIII.

HALF ONE IS ONE.

I AM going to give you the whole story, but not this moment; I want to talk a little first. I need not say that I had twin uncles. They were but one man to the world; to themselves only were they a veritable two. The word twin means one of two that once were one. To twin means to divide, they tell me. The opposite action is, of twain to make one. To me also, I believe, but for the closeness of

the relation in which I had all my life stood to my Uncle Edward, they would have been but as one man. I hardly know that I felt any richer at first for having two of them; it was long before I should have felt much poorer for the loss of Uncle Edmund. Uncle Edward was to me the substance of which Uncle Edmund was but the shadow. But at length I too learned to love him dearly by beholding how dearly my own uncle loved him. I loved the one because he was what he was, the other because he was not that one. Love commonly differentiates that it may unite; in the case of my uncles it seemed only to divide that it might unite. I am hardly intelligible to myself, and am getting into a bog of ill-defined metaphysics, out of which it is time I scrambled. What I would say is this: that what made the world not care there should be two of them, made the earth a heaven to those two. By their not being one, they were able to love, and so were one. Like twin planets they revolved around each other, and in a common orbit around God their sun. It was a beautiful thing to see how Uncle Edmund revived and expanded, until he became in the light of his brother's presence, as much himself as he had ever been. He had suffered more than my own uncle, and had not had an orphan child to love and be loved by.

What a drive home that was! Paris, anywhere seemed home now! I had John and my uncles; John had me and my uncle; my uncles had each other; and 1 suspect, if we could have looked into Martha, we should have seen that she, through her lovely unselfishness, possessed us all more than any one of us another. Oh, the outbursts of gladness on the way! - the talks! - the silences! The past fell off like an ugly veil from the true face of things; the present was sunshine; the future a rosy cloud.

When we reached our hotel, it was dinner time, and John ordered a bottle of champagne. He and I were hungry as two happy children, but the uncles ate little, and scarcely drank. They were too happy in each other to be aware of any animal need. A strange solemnity crowned and dominated their gladness. Each was to the other a Lazarus given back from the grave. But to understand the depth of their rapture, you must know their story. That of Martha and Mary could not have equalled it but for the presence of the master, for neither of those had done the other wrong. They coked to me like men walking in a lumi

nous mista mist of unspeakable suffering, radiant with a joy as unspeakable -the very stuff to fashion into glorious dreams.

When we drew round the fire, for the evenings were chilly, they laid their whole history open to us. What a story it was! and what a telling of it! My own uncle, Edward, was the principal narrator, but he was occasionally helped out by my newer uncle, Edmund. I had the narrative in writing at home, and when we returned I read it not with the same absorption as if it had come first, but with as much interest, and certainly with the more thorough comprehension that I had listened to it before. That same written story I will presently give, with such elucidation as I may be able to add from the narrative of my Uncle Edward, and the supplement of my Uncle Edmund.

As the story proceeded, overcome with the horror of the revelation I foresaw, I forgot myself and cried out,

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"And that woman is John's mother!" "Whose mother?" asked Uncle Edmund, with scornful curiosity.

"John Day's," I answered.

"Are you sure of it?" he asked again. "I have always been given so to understand," replied John for me; "but I am by no means sure of it. I have doubted it a thousand times."

"No wonder. To believe you her son, would be to doubt you."

"Of course it would," responded John. "I might be true, though, even if I were her son !"

"Ed," said Edmund to Edward, "let us lay our heads together!"

"Ready, Ed," said Edward to Edmund; and therewith they began comparing memories and recollections, to find, however, that they had by no means data enough.

"It would be just like one of her deviltricks," remarked Uncle Edmund.

"I beg your pardon, John," said Uncle Edward, as if it were he that had used the phrase.

Uncle Edmund said nothing, only nodded to John, who also held his peace. His eyes looked wild with hope. He felt like one who, having been taught that he is a child of the devil, begins to know that God is his father-the one discovery worth making by son of man.

"When will you start, Ed?" "To-morrow, Ed."

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How Uncle Edmund had regained his wits! And how young the brothers looked!

"You mean," said John, "until he has known my mother!”

Then there was silence. Presently a few more questions were asked, and it came out that the possible reason why John had learned nothing of consequence to him when he went to London, was, that he had gone to Lady Cairnedge's lawyer. He had never had anything to do with business before, and had learned no caution except with his mother. Of a peculiarly open and trusting, because trustworthy nature, all the power of distrust that lay in him had been spent on his mother.

Now for the story of my twin uncles, mainly as written by my uncle Edward.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE STORY OF MY TWIN UNCLES.

"My brother and I were marvellously like. Very few of our friends, none of them with certainty, could name either of us apart―or even together. It might be said with truth, that only two persons knew absolutely which either of us was, and those two were ourselves. Each of us even has occasionally made the blunder of calling the other by the name that was not his but that of the one who spoke. Our indistinguishableness was the source of ever recurring mistakes, of constant amusement, of frequent bewilderment, and sometimes of annoyance in the family. I once heard my father say to a friend, that

"This business of John's must come God had never made two things altogether

first, Ed!"

"It shall, Ed.”

alike, except his twins. We two enjoyed the fun of it so much, that we did our best

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