Such manly tenderness, such gravity lighted by smiles, such liberty without danger, such perpetual care of soul and body made little Ursula, when nine years of age, a well-trained child and delightful to behold.
Unhappily, this paternal trinity was broken up.

The old captain died the following year, leaving the abbe and the doctor to finish his work, of which, however, he had accomplished the most difficult part.

Flowers will bloom of themselves if grown in a soil thus prepared.

The old gentleman had laid by for ten years past one thousand francs a year, that he might leave ten thousand to his little Ursula, and keep a place in her memory during her whole life.

In his will, the wording of which was very touching, he begged his legatee to spend the four or five hundred francs that came of her little capital exclusively on her dress.
When the justice of the peace applied the seals to the effects of his old friend, they found in a small room, which the captain had allowed no one to enter, a quantity of toys, many of them broken, while all had been used,--toys of a past generation, reverently preserved, which Monsieur Bongrand was, according to the captain's last wishes, to burn with his own hands.
About this time it was that Ursula made her first communion.