“My family!” said she, “I have none.  They are all gone now!”

I thought her mind was wandering.  “Your father and mother,” said I, “where are they?” My heart smote me as I uttered the words, but the question was necessary.

“I have no father and mother!”

“Nor brothers and sisters?  Pardon me, but I must ask.”

“You need not ask, because I will tell you.  There were many of us once, but I am the last!”

I could not go on, yet it must be done.

“But you have friends, who will come to you?”

“Yes; I have a grandfather.  He lives in Hampshire.  He is very old, but he will come to me, if he still lives.  If not!”——­

“He will come,” said I, “I will write to him directly.”

“I will write myself!” exclaimed she, starting up.  “He will not believe the story unless I write myself.  Who would believe it?”

I assured her she should write the next day; but I positively forbad such an exertion at present.  She yielded; she was indeed in no condition for writing.  Her mind seemed in an unnatural state; and I was by no means sure that she had given a correct account of herself.  I wrote to her grandfather, on the supposition that she had; and was quite satisfied when, in the evening, she gave me, in few words, her family history.  She had been relieved, though exhausted, by tears; and her mind was calm and rational.  She was indeed the last of her family.  Her mother had died a few weeks before, after a lingering illness; and the sole surviving brother and sister had been prevailed on to take this tour, to recruit their strength and spirits, after their long watching and anxiety.  They were always, as I discovered, bound together by the strongest affection; and now that they had been made by circumstances all in all to each other, they were thus separated!  Will not my readers excuse my attempting to describe such grief as her’s must have been?

Her grandfather arrived on the earliest possible day.  He was old, and had some infirmities; but his health was not, as he assured us, at all injured by his hurried and painful journey.  Nothing could be more tender than his kindness to his charge; though he was, perhaps, too far advanced in this life, and too near another, to feel the pressure of this kind of sorrow, as a younger or weaker mind would have done.

I could not help indulging in much painful conjecture as to the fate of this young creature, when she should lose her last remaining stay:  a period which could not be far distant.  But on this point I obtained some satisfaction before her departure.

A few days before she left me, a gentleman arrived at the inn, and came immediately to my cottage.  She introduced him to me as “a friend.”  No one said what kind of a friend he was; but I could entertain no doubt that he was one who would supply the place of her brother to her.

“Her mind will not be left without a keeper,” thought I, as I saw them direct their steps to the brother’s grave.  “Thank God, her grandfather is not her only remaining stay!”