my life, and afterwards you sustained it by your food and raiment:  I ought to have maintained myself, and to have contributed to your maintenance.  But besides this, your treatment of me was the first of my preferment; it recommended me to the notice of this noble family.  Everything that happened to me since, has been a step to my present state of honour and happiness.  Never man had so many benefactors as myself; but both they, and myself, have been only instruments in the hands of Providence, to bring about its own purposes; let us praise God for all!  I shared your poverty, and you will share my riches; I will give you the cottage where you dwell, and the ground about it; I will also pay you the annual sum of ten pounds for the lives of you both; I will put out your children to manual trades, and assist you to provide for them in their own station; and you are to look upon this as paying a debt, and not bestowing a gift; I owe you more than I can ever pay; and, if there be any thing further in my power that will contribute to your happiness, you can ask nothing in reason that I will deny you.”

Andrew hid his face; “I cannot bear it!” said he; “oh what a brute was I, to abuse such a child as this!  I shall never forgive myself!”

“You must indeed, my friend; for I forgive and thank you.”

Andrew retired back, but Margery came forward; she looked earnestly on Edmund, she then threw her arms about his neck, and wept aloud.

“My precious child! my lovely babe! thank God, I have lived to see this day!  I will rejoice in your good fortune, and your bounty to us, but I must ask one more favour yet; that I may sometimes come hither and behold that gracious countenance, and thank God that I was honoured so far as to give thee food from my own breast, and to bring thee up to be a blessing to me, and to all that know thee!”

Edmund was affected, he returned her embrace; he bade her come to the Castle as often as she pleased, and she should always be received as his mother; the bride saluted her, and told her the oftener she came, the more welcome she should be.

Margery and her husband retired, full of blessings and prayers for their happiness; she gave vent to her joy, by relating to the servants and neighbours every circumstance of Edmund’s birth, infancy, and childhood.  Many a tear was dropped by the auditors, and many a prayer wafted to Heaven for his happiness.  Joseph took up the story where she left it:  he told the rising dawn of youth and virtue, darting its ray through the clouds of obscurity, and how every stroke of envy and malignity brushed away some part of the darkness that veiled its lustre.  He told the story of the haunted apartment, and all the consequences of it; how he and Oswald conveyed the youth away from the Castle, no more to return till he came as master of it.  He closed the tale with praise to Heaven for the happy discovery, that gave such an heir to the house of Lovel; to his dependants such a Lord and Master; to mankind a friend and benefactor.  There was truly a house of joy; not that false kind, in the midst of which there is heaviness, but that of rational creatures, grateful to the Supreme Benefactor, raising their minds by a due enjoyment of earthly blessings to a preparation for a more perfect state hereafter.