When he
learnt the truth he was furious, and would, he vowed, shoot both her
and her betrayer; but fraternal affection was so strong within him
that he gradually became more calm, and exerted himself to make the
best he could of a bad business. He requested me to take the child
and place it in a nunnery in spite of the earnest protestations of
its mother, and persuaded the latter to return to her home in
Glengarry, promising to hide her shame from her mother and friends
if she would bid farewell forever to the child and her betrayer. He
persistently refused even to look at the baby, but, rough and
uncultivated as he was, I could see a tear glisten in his eye as his
manly heart quivered with emotion.
Home the poor broken-hearted girl went, and the baby was left in my
keeping till the morrow, when, according to agreement, I was to hand
it over to the good sisters. It was destined to be otherwise, however.
That evening a gentleman called at my house; he was a bachelor, well
to do in the world, and hearing the story, which it was necessary to
tell him, in order to explain the child's presence, he asked me with
pardonable curiosity to let him see the baby. When he took her in
his arms she smiled so sweetly upon him, and crowed so joyously,
that his heart was touched, and he could not bear to think that the
poor helpless babe should be made to suffer for the sins of its
parents; he asked me to let _him_ have the child, promising that he
would adopt her, and do for her as if she were his own.
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