Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/149

 Waldegrave, who has been my only friend, and by the sight of one whom he loved.

"I told you that my father lived in Chetasco: he is now aged, and I am his only child: I should have rejoiced in being able to relieve his grey hairs from labour, to which his failing strength cannot be equal. This was one of my inducements in coming to America; another was, to prepare the way for a woman whom I married in Europe, and who is now awaiting intelligence from me in London: her poverty is not less than my own; and by marrying against the wishes of her kindred, she has bereaved herself of all support but that of her husband. Whether I shall be able to rescue her from indigence, whether I shall alleviate the poverty of my father, or increase it by burdening his scanty friends by my own maintenance as well as his, the future alone can determine.

"I confess that my stock of patience and hope has never been large, and that my misfortunes have nearly exhausted it: the flower of my years has been consumed in struggling with adversity, and my constitution has received a shock from sickness and ill-treatment in Portugal, which I cannot expect long to survive. But I make you sad," he continued: "I have said all that I meant to say in this interview: I am impatient to see my father, and night has already come; I have some miles yet to ride to his cottage, and over a rough road: I will shortly visit you again, and talk to you at greater leisure on these and other topics; at present I leave you."

I was unwilling to part so abruptly with this guest, and entreated him to prolong his visit; but he would not be prevailed upon: repeating his promise of shortly seeing me again, he mounted his horse, and disappeared. I looked after him with affecting and complex emotions; I reviewed the incidents of this unexpected and extraordinary interview as if it had existed in a dream. An hour had passed, and this stranger had alighted among us as from the clouds, to draw the veil from those obscurities which had bewildered us so long, to make visible a new train of disastrous consequences flowing from the untimely death of thy brother,