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shoulder. After looking doubtfully at it, two or three times, as if
to be sure that it was really there, he laid down his work, put his
hand to his neck, and took off a blackened string with a scrap of
folded rag attached to it. He opened this, carefully, on his knee,
and it contained a very little quantity of hair: not more than one or
two long golden hairs, which he had, in some old day, wound off upon
his finger.

He took her hair into his hand again, and looked closely at it. "It
is the same. How can it be! When was it! How was it!"

As the concentrated expression returned to his forehead, he seemed to
become conscious that it was in hers too. He turned her full to the
light, and looked at her.

"She had laid her head upon my shoulder, that night when I was
summoned out--she had a fear of my going, though I had none--and when
I was brought to the North Tower they found these upon my sleeve.
'You will leave me them? They can never help me to escape in the
body, though they may in the spirit.' Those were the words I said.
I remember them very well."

He formed this speech with his lips many times before he could utter
it. But when he did find spoken words for it, they came to him
coherently, though slowly.

"How was this?--_Was it you_?"

Once more, the two spectators started, as he turned upon her with a
frightful suddenness. But she sat perfectly still in his grasp, and
only said, in a low voice, "I entreat you, good gentlemen, do not
come near us, do not speak, do not move!"

"Hark!" he exclaimed. "Whose voice was that?"

His hands released her as he uttered this cry, and went up to his
white hair, which they tore in a frenzy. It died out, as everything
but his shoemaking did die out of him, and he refolded his little
packet and tried to secure it in his breast; but he still looked at
her, and gloomily shook his head.

"No, no, no; you are too young, too blooming. It can't be. See what
the prisoner is. These are not the hands she knew, this is not the
face she knew, this is not a voice she ever heard. No, no. She
was--and He was--before the slow years of the North Tower--ages ago.
What is your name, my gentle angel?"

Hailing his softened tone and manner, his daughter fell upon her
knees before him, with her appealing hands upon his breast.

"O, sir, at another time you shall know my name, and who my mother
was, and who my father, and how I never knew their hard, hard
history. But I cannot tell you at this time, and I cannot tell you
here. All that I may tell you, here and now, is, that I pray to you
to touch me and to bless me. Kiss me, kiss me! O my dear, my dear!"

His cold white head mingled with her radiant hair, which warmed and
lighted it as though it were the light of Freedom shining on him.

"If you hear in my voice--I don't know that it is so, but I hope it
is--if you hear in my voice any resemblance to a voice that once was
sweet music in your ears, weep for it, weep for it! If you touch,

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