Soon all were gathered about the dinner-table, and the evening passed very pleasantly.
When, at a late hour, Hugh Mainwaring, in the dimly-lighted veranda, bade his guests good-night, he grasped the hand of his namesake and said, in a tone remarkably tender,-- "Hugh, my boy, the distance is long between the twenty-first and the fiftieth mile-stones on the journey of life.

Heaven grant, when you shall have reached the latter, you may look back over a brighter pathway than I do to-night!" Then, as the young man passed, he murmured to himself "If I could but have had just such a son as he!" He did not see, though there was one who did, a woman's form glide away in the dim light, her eyes gleaming with malignant fire..