"None! No one to care whether I live or die," answered the stranger, with a mixture of pride and sadness in his voice. "But, as the song has it—
"'I care for nobody—no, not I,
For nobody cares for me!'"
There was a certain pathos in the mockery with which he repeated the homely lines, although, as he did, he gathered himself up, as if conscious of a certain consolation and reliance on the resources not dependent on others which he had found in his own strong limbs and his own stout heart.
At that moment he felt a soft touch upon his hand, and he saw Fanny looking at him through the tears that still flowed.
"You have no one to care for you? Don't say so! Come and live with us, brother; we'll care for you. I have never forgotten the flowers—never! Do come! Fanny shall love you. Fanny can work for three!"
"And they call her an idiot!" mumbled the old man, with a vacant smile on his lips.
"My sister! You shall be my sister! Forlorn one—whom even Nature has fooled and betrayed! Sister!—we, both orphans! Sister!" exclaimed that dark, stern man, passionately, and with a broken voice; and he opened his arms, and Fanny, without a blush or a thought of shame, threw herself on his breast. He kissed her forehead with a kiss that was, indeed, pure and holy as a brother's: and Fanny felt that he had left upon her cheek a tear that was not her own.
"Well," he said, with an altered voice, and taking the old man's hand, "what say you? Shall I take up my lodging with you? I have a little money; I can protect and aid you both. I shall be often away—in London or else where—and will not intrude too much on you. But you blind, and she—(here he broke off the sentence abruptly and went on)—you should not be left alone. And this neighbourhood, that burial-place, are dear to me. I, too, Fanny, have lost a parent; and that grave—"
He paused, and then added, in a trembling voice, "And you have placed flowers over that grave?"
"Stay with us," said the blind man; "not for our sake, but your own. The world is a bad place. I have been long sick of the world. Yes! come and live near the burial-ground—the nearer you are to the grave, the safer you are;—and you have a little money, you say!"