child with my perilous secret.  I told them I had watched her character, and I felt sure she would not betray me; that I was determined to have an interview, and if they would not facilitate it, I would take my own way to obtain it.  They remonstrated against the rashness of such a proceeding; but finding they could not change my purpose, they yielded.  I slipped through the trap-door into the storeroom, and my uncle kept watch at the gate, while I passed into the piazza and went up stairs, to the room I used to occupy.  It was more than five years since I had seen it; and how the memories crowded on me!  There I had taken shelter when my mistress drove me from her house; there came my old tyrant, to mock, insult, and curse me; there my children were first laid in my arms; there I had watched over them, each day with a deeper and sadder love; there I had knelt to God, in anguish of heart, to forgive the wrong I had done.  How vividly it all came back!  And after this long, gloomy interval, I stood there such a wreck!

In the midst of these meditations, I heard footsteps on the stairs.  The door opened, and my uncle Phillip came in, leading Ellen by the hand.  I put my arms round her, and said, “Ellen, my dear child, I am your mother.”  She drew back a little, and looked at me; then, with sweet confidence, she laid her cheek against mine, and I folded her to the heart that had been so long desolated.  She was the first to speak.  Raising her head, she said, inquiringly, “You really are my mother?” I told her I really was; that during all the long time she had not seen me, I had loved her most tenderly; and that now she was going away, I wanted to see her and talk with her, that she might remember me.  With a sob in her voice, she said, “I’m glad you’ve come to see me; but why didn’t you ever come before?  Benny and I have wanted so much to see you!  He remembers you, and sometimes he tells me about you.  Why didn’t you come home when Dr. Flint went to bring you?”

I answered, “I couldn’t come before, dear.  But now that I am with you, tell me whether you like to go away.”  “I don’t know,” said she, crying.  “Grandmother says I ought not to cry; that I am going to a good place, where I can learn to read and write, and that by and by I can write her a letter.  But I shan’t have Benny, or grandmother, or uncle Phillip, or any body to love me.  Can’t you go with me?  O, do go, dear mother!”

I told her I couldn’t go now; but sometime I would come to her, and then she and Benny and I would live together, and have happy times.  She wanted to run and bring Benny to see me now.  I told her he was going to the north, before long, with uncle Phillip, and then I would come to see him before he went away.  I asked if she would like to have me stay all night and sleep with her.  “O, yes,” she replied.  Then, turning to her uncle, she said, pleadingly, “May I stay?  Please, uncle!  She is my own mother.”  He laid his hand on her head, and said, solemnly,