Hannah sobbed on in silence.

“Aunt Hannah! by my mother’s grave, I adjure you to answer me!  Was I right?”

“No, Ishmael, you were not!” wailed Hannah.

“Then I do not bear my father’s name?”

“No.”

“But only my poor mother’s?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Heaven! how is that?”

“Because you have no legal right to your father’s; because the only name to which you have any legal right is your poor, wronged mother’s!”

With a groan that seemed to rend body and soul asunder, Ishmael threw himself upon his mother’s grave.

“You said she was an angel!  And I know that she was!” he cried, as soon as he had recovered the power of speech.

“I said truly, and you know the truth!” wept Hannah.

“How, then, is it, that I, her son, cannot bear my father’s name?”

“Ishmael, your mother was the victim of a false marriage!”

Ishmael sprang up from his recumbent posture, and gazed at his aunt with a fierceness that pierced through the darkness.

“And so pure and proud was she, that the discovery broke her heart!”

Ishmael threw himself once more upon the grave, and clasping the mound in his arms, burst into a passionate flood of tears, and wept long and bitterly.  And, after a while, through this shower of tears, came forth in gusty sobs these words: 

“Oh, mother!  Oh, poor, young, wronged, and broken-hearted mother! sleep in peace; for your son lives to vindicate you.  Yes, if he has been spared, it was for this purpose—­to honor, to vindicate, to avenge you!” And after these words his voice was again lost and drowned in tears and sobs.

Hannah kneeled down beside him, took his hand, and tried to raise him, saying: 

“Ishmael, my love, get up, dear!  There was no wrong done, no crime committed, nothing to avenge.  Your father was as guiltless as your mother, my boy; there was no sin; nothing from first to last but great misfortune.  Come into the house, my Ishmael, and I will tell you all about it.”

“Yes; tell me all! tell me every particular; have no more concealments from me!” cried Ishmael, rising to follow his aunt.

“I will not; but oh, my boy! gladly would I have kept the sorrowful story concealed from you forever, but that I know from what I have seen of you to-night, that some rude tongue has told you of your misfortune—­and told you wrong besides!” said Hannah, as they re-entered the hut.

They sat down beside the small wood fire that the chill night made not unwelcome, even in August.  Hannah sat in her old arm-chair, and Ishmael on the three-legged stool at her feet, with his head in her lap.  And there, with her hand caressing his light brown hair, Hannah told him the story of his mother’s love and suffering and death.

At some parts of her story his tears gushed forth in floods, and his sobs shook his whole frame.  Then Hannah would be forced to pause in her narrative, until he had regained composure enough to listen to the sequel.