Self-Raised; Or, From the Depths. Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

a handsome hobby-horse which he took out and set up before the delighted eyes of Johnny.

      He lifted the tiny man into the saddle, fixed his feet in the stirrups, gave him the bridle, and showed him how to manage his steed.

      "There, Johnny," said Ishmael, "I cannot realize your aspirations in respect to the driver's seat on the ox-cart, but I think this will do for the present."

      "Ah, yes!" cried the ecstatic Johnny, "put Molly up behind! put Molly up behind and let her sit and hold on to me! My horse can carry double."

      "Never mind! I've got something for Molly that she will like better than that," said Ishmael, smiling kindly on the little girl, who stood with her finger in her mouth looking as if she thought herself rather neglected.

      And he unlocked his trunk and took from the top of it a large, finely painted, substantially dressed wooden doll, that looked as if it could bear a great deal of knocking about without injury.

      Molly made an impulsive spring towards this treasure, and was immediately rendered happy by its possession.

      Then Sally was elevated to the seventh heaven by the gift of the coral breastpin.

      Hannah received a handsome brown silk dress and Reuben a new writing-desk, and Sam a silver watch, and Jim a showy vest-pattern.

      And Ishmael, having distributed his presents, ordered his trunk to be carried upstairs, and the box into the outhouse.

      When the children were tired of their play Hannah took them off to hear them say their prayers and put them to bed.

      And then Ishmael and Reuben were left alone.

      And the opportunity that Ishmael wanted had come.

      He could have spoken of his parents to either Hannah or Reuben separately; but he felt that he could not enter upon the subject in the presence of both together.

      Now he drew his chair to the side of Gray and said:

      "Uncle Reuben, I have something serious to say to you."

      "Eh! Ishmael! what have I been doing of? I dessay something wrong in the bringing up of the young uns!" said Reuben, in dismay, expecting to be court-martialed upon some grave charge.

      "It is of my parents that I wish to speak, Uncle Reuben."

      "Oh!" said the latter, with an air of relief.

      "You knew my mother, Uncle Reuben; but did you know who my father was?"

      "No," said Reuben thoughtfully. "All I knowed was as he married of your mother in a private manner, and from sarcumstances never owned up to it; but left her name and yourn to suffer for it—the cowardly rascal, whoever he was!"

      "Hush, Uncle Reuben, hush! You are speaking of my father!"

      "And a nice father he wur to let your good mother's fair name come to grief and leave you to perish a'most!"

      "Uncle Reuben, you know too little of the circumstances to be able to judge!"

      "Law, Ishmael, it takes but little knowledge and less judgment to understand, as when a feller fersakes his wife and child for nothink, and leaves 'em to suffer undesarved scandal and cruel want, he must be an unnatural monster and a parjured vilyun!"

      "Uncle Reuben, you are unjust to my father! You must listen to his

       vindication from my lips, and then you will acquit him of all blame.

       But first I must tell you in confidence his name—it is Herman

       Brudenell!"

      "There now!" exclaimed Reuben, dropping his pipe in his astonishment; "to think that I had that fact right afore my eyes all my life and never could see it! Well, of all the blind moles and owls, I must a been the blindest! And to think as I was the very first as warned the poor girl agin him at that birthday feast! But, law, arter that I never saw them together agin, no, not once! So I had no cause to s'picion him, no more nor others! Well and now, Ishmael, tell me all how and about it! Long as it was him, Mr. Herman, there must a been something uncommon about it, for I don't believe he'd do anythink dishonorable, not if he knowed it!"

      "Not if he knew it! You are right there, Uncle Reuben," said Ishmael, who immediately related the tragic story of his parents' marriage, ending with the family wreck that had ruined all their happiness.

      "Dear me! dear, dear me! what a sorrowful story for all hands, to be sure! Well, Ishmael, whoever was most to be pitied in former times, your father is most to be pitied now. Be good to him," said Reuben.

      "You may be sure that I will do all that I can to comfort my father, Uncle Reuben. And now a word to you! Speak of this matter to me alone whenever you like; or to Aunt Hannah alone whenever you like; but to no others; and not even to us when we are together! for I cannot bear that this old tragic history should become the subject of general conversation."

      "I know, Ishmael, my boy, I know! Mum's the word!" said Reuben.

      And the entrance of Hannah at that moment put an end to the conversation.

      There was one subject upon which Ishmael felt a little uneasiness—the dread of meeting Claudia.

      He knew that she was not expected at Tanglewood until the first of October; for so the judge had informed him in a letter that he had received the very night before he left Washington. And this was only the first of September; and he intended to give himself but two weeks' holiday and to be back at his office by the fourteenth at farthest, full sixteen days before the expected arrival of Lord and Lady Vincent at Tanglewood.

      Yet this dread of meeting Claudia haunted him. His love was dead; but as he had told Bee, it had died hard and rent his heart in its death-struggles, and that heart was sore to the touch of her presence.

      The judge's letter wherein he had spoken of the date of his daughter and son-in-law's visit had been written several days previous to this evening, and since that, news might have come from them, speaking of some change of plan, involving an earlier visit.

      These Ishmael felt were the mere chimeras of imagination. Still he thought he would inquire concerning the family at Tanglewood.

      "They are all well up at the house, I hope, Uncle Reuben?" he asked.

      "Famous! And having everything shined up bright as a new shilling, in honor of the arrival of my lord and my lady, who are expected, come first o' next mont'."

      "On the first of October? Are you sure?"

      "On the first of October, sharp! Not a day earlier or later! I was up to the house yes'day afternoon, just afore you come; and sure enough the judge, he had just got a letter from the young madam—my lady, I mean—in which she promised not to disappoint him, but to be at Tanglewood punctually on the first of October to a day!"

      Reuben, a hard-working man, who was "early to bed and early to rise," concluded this speech with such an awful, uncompromising yawn that Ishmael immediately took up and lighted his bedroom candle, bid them all good-night, and retired.

      He was once more in the humble little attic room where he had first chanced upon a set of old law books and imbibed a taste for the legal profession.

      There was the old "screwtaw," as Reuben called it, and there was the old well-thumbed volumes that had constituted his sole wealth of books before he had the range of the well-filled library at Tanglewood.

      And there was the plain deal table standing within the dormer window, where he had been accustomed to sit and read and write; or, whenever he raised his head, to gaze out upon the ocean-like expanse of water near the mouth of the Potomac.

      After all, this humble attic chamber had many points of resemblance with that more pretentious one he had occupied in Judge Merlin's elegant mansion in Washington. Both were on the north side of the Potomac. Each had a large dormer window looking southwest and commanding an extensive view of the river; within the recess of each window he had been accustomed to sit and read or write.

      The