"He never meant to wrong my
father of a shilling."
"Well said, dear Harry; well said. He was himself a wronged--a murdered
man. Imprisoned for nineteen years, and then to perish thus! And yet men
talk of Heaven's justice! My boy! my boy!"
The two women were silent for a while--the one gazing with dry eyes but
tender yearning face upon the other, as she rocked herself to and fro,
and shook with stifled sobs.
"Dear Harry, you must not desert me now," pleaded the former, pitifully;
"I am very old, and this has broken me. He was my all--my only one on
earth--and he is dead. I shall not trouble you long. We two, child, were
the only ones that loved him, and we love him still. Let me cling to
you, Harry, since it is but for a little while; and let us talk of him
together, when we are alone, and think of what he was. So bright, so
gay, so--Oh, my boy! my boy!"
The tears rushed to the mother's eyes at last. Hard Fate was softened
for a while toward it's life-long victim; and side by side sat the two
bereaved women, each striving to comfort the other, after woman's
fashion, by painting in its brightest colors that dead Past which both
deplored. Begotten of their common sorrow, Love sprang up between them,
and on one side confidence; and into Mrs. Basil's hungry ears Harry, for
the first time, poured the story of her courtship.
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