Page:The Poor Rich Man, and the Rich Poor Man.djvu/98

and meeting his earnest and pitiful glance, he burst into tears. At this moment Aikin appeared, and William whispered to him what had occurred. Aikin recognised the man as a person he had frequently met during the preceding week inquiring for work; he put a few questions in a friendly tone, that inspired the stranger with confidence; and, in return, he told him that he had been a poor English curate—that many years ago his youngest daughter had married imprudently and come to America—that the last he had heard of her was four years before, when he received a hasty, illegible scrawl, in which she informed him that she was a widow, and had embarked on board the ship from which she then wrote to return to him—that her child exhibiting symptoms of varioloid, she was ordered off the ship, and knew not what was to become of her. The father, after waiting till, as he said, he could live and wait no longer, had converted his little property into money, and come with an elder daughter in search of the lost one. He had arrived here at the beginning of the inclement season—he had obtained no intelligence of his child—his eldest daughter, whose efficiency and fortitude he mainly relied on, took a cold, with which she languished through the winter, and had died two weeks before. His health was broken, his heart gone, and his little stock of money expended to the last farthing. Hunger had driven him forth to seek employment to support a life that had become a burden to him, but employment he could not find; and, "when I sunk down here," he concluded, "I was glad the time of release had come;