"I have not forgotten your kind injunction that I should go to bed at an early hour," said the son, as he turned his love-beaming looks upon his parents: "but I should have had little chance of sleeping, unless I had previously wished you good night, and received your usual blessing."

"God bless you, my dear boy!" murmured the father, whose voice still trembled from the agitation into which he had been thrown.

"God bless you, my beloved Benjamin ! " ejaculated the mother, as she threw her arms around his neck, and impressed a kiss upon either cheek.

"I believe that your blessings and prayers have already done me good," said the youth, "for I feel much better within these few days, and I hope I shall now soon be quite well. Very, very grateful am I to Heaven for this little improvement, and I pray that I may never forget the mercies vouchsafed to me! 'Tis on your

account rather than my own that I am so anxious to recover, for I long to make a return, however inadequate, for all your kindness, and to contribute in some way to your comfort. I am weary of being idle, ashamed of being such a burthen and expense to you, when I know how narrow are your means. Mary is only two or three years older than myself, and yet she is always at her needle, or assisting in the household offices. Dear father, do not you think I am now strong enough to take a situation in some counting-house?"

"No, no, my blessed boy! cried the mother, "not yet awhile, not yet awhile. We must completely establish your health before we suffer you to be immured in a close, perhaps an unhealthy, counting-house, and tied down to a desk. A burthen to us, Benjamin! You are our joy, our glory, our consolation, our chief blessing; and besides, you must recollect that we are no longer in so narrow an abode,

or in quite such necessitous circumstances as

formerly."

"Thanks to worthy Mr. Hoffman for all his goodness to us. How is he to-night, dear mother?"

"He fancies himself better, but he is in reality worse-much worse."

"Poor man! I am sorry for his sad condition; it quite makes my heart throb to think of him. I always pray for him before I go to sleep, and this night I will be more urgent than ever in my prayers."

"Leave him to the care of Heaven, and get to sleep as soon as you can," said Mrs. Lomax, as if she feared that there might be some efficacy in her son's intercessions. "Good night, my dear boy! your father and I have important business to transact, and besides it is time you were a-bed." So saying, she again embraced him, accompanied him to the door, locked it when he had passed out of hearing, returned to

the place where her husband was sitting, and, drawing the will from her pocket, spread it out on the little table beside him, while she looked earnestly and inquiringly in his face, as if awaiting his decision.

Lomax, without uttering a syllable, for he was almost equally afraid to accede or to refuse, ran his eye hastily over the paper until he came to the codicil, when his attention was arrested by the sight of his own name. The unexpected legacy, and the praises bestowed upon him for his faithful services, seeming at length to have brought his wavering mind to a decision, he folded up the will, and handed it back to his wife, saying: "Did you see the codicil, dear Jane? This is a generosity upon which I did not calculate. Mr. Hoffman has been kind to us in many ways. I am aware of your motives in the hazardous proposition you have made, and, knowing them to be disinterested, I can excuse them; but your maternal affection has led you astray. Your

own better and cooler judgment will confess that it is an abominable scheme-an act of the blackest ingratitude; for surely, surely, it would rather become us to be imitating our dear boy, by praying for the recovery of our benefactor, than to be wronging him thus cruelly, and placing a halter around our own necks."

Wrong him! how can we wrong the dead?" demanded the wife in a tone of angry impatience; "how place a halter around our necks, when I have proved to you that there is no possibility of detection? Is it your own cant and cowardice, or this paltry pittance of two hundred pounds, that has suggested such futile objections? To what does it amount, this insulting legacy, so inadequate to our services? It supplies one year's subsistence, and then consigns us to all the horrors of drudging, abject, and squalid poverty."

"But with an unblemished name."

"No-with the stigma of penury, the most