“This is from you, I believe, doctor?” he said, holding up the note I had written him.

I bowed.

“How did you come in possession of the casket you sent me?” he continued as he took the chair I handed him.

I was about replying, when he leaned over toward me, and laying his hand upon my arm, said, eagerly—­

“First tell me, is the writer of its contents living?”

“No,” I replied; “she has been dead over two years.”

His countenance fell, and he seemed, for some moments, as if his heart had ceased to beat.  “Dead!” he muttered to himself—­“dead! and I have in my hands undoubted proofs of her innocence.”

The expression of his face became agonizing.

“Oh, what would I not give if she were yet alive,” he continued, speaking to himself.  “Dead—­dead—­I would rather be dead with her than living with my present consciousness.”

“Doctor,” said he, after a pause, speaking in a firmer voice, “let me know how those papers came into your hands?” I related, as rapidly as I could, what the reader already knows about little Bill and his mother dwelling as strongly as I could upon the suffering condition of the poor boy.

“Good heavens!” ejaculated Miller, as I closed my narrative—­“can all this indeed be true?  So much for hasty judgment from appearances!  You have heard the melancholy history of my wife?”

I bowed an assent.

“From these evidences, that bear the force of truth, it is plain that she was innocent, though adjudged guilty of one of the most heinous offences against society.  Innocent, and yet made to suffer all the penalties of guilt.  Ah, sir—­I thought life had already brought me its bitterest cup:  but all before were sweet to the taste compared with the one I am now compelled to drink.  Nothing is now left me, but to take home my child.  But, as he grows up toward manhood, how can I look him in the face, and think of his mother whom I so deeply wronged.”

“The events of the past, my dear sir,” I urged, “cannot be altered.  In a case like this, it is better to look, forward with hope, than backward with self-reproaches.”

“There is little in the future to hope for,” was the mournful reply to this.

“But you have a duty to perform, and, in the path of duty, always lie pleasures.”

“You mean to my much wronged and suffering child.  Yes, I have a duty, and it shall be performed as faithfully as lies in my power.  But I hope for little from that source.”

“I think you may hope for much.  Your child I have questioned closely.  He knows nothing of his history; does not even know that his father is alive.  The only information he has received from his mother is, that W——­is his uncle.”

“Are you sure of this?”

“Oh yes.  I have, as I said, questioned him very closely on this point.”

This seemed to relieve the mind of Mr. Miller.  He mused for some minutes, and then said—­