Oh! how the long-forgotten thoughts offormer days rushed upon his mind, as he almost ran up and down thenarrow yard--as if intelligence would arrive the sooner for hishurrying--and how bitterly a sense of his helplessness and desolationrushed upon him, when he heard the truth! His mother, the only parenthe had ever known, lay ill--it might be, dying--within one mile of theground he stood on; were he free and unfettered, a few minutes wouldplace him by her side.