true! Mr. Ferris convinced Nelly how true George is. And if you are going to see him, just tell him, from me, Nelly would not have married Mr. Ferris for all my persuading, if she hadn't been made acquainted with his nice goings on since he left us."

William stayed to hear no more.

He reached the metropolis just in time to enter bail for his friend before a magistrate in a public police court. It was for this object George had sent for him.

The two then retired to a secluded corner in a coffee-room, where George detailed all that he knew of his employer's proceedings, and his own painful position, unaware for some hours that worse remained behind.

66

'Now, tell me all about your sister," said George.

"What shall I tell you about her ?" The farmer started up from his seat and clutched his hat. "Coom out into the streets," said he; "this place is enow to stifle a body."

When they were in the streets, he kept parrying George's questions about Nelly, and opposing to them a great many other questions about the streets, and the shops, and the public buildings, until George was struck by a new alarm, and asked him if all were right at Sandown.

"How you do bother a chap," testily returned William. "What's yon ?" pointing to a great staring, flaring gin-palace. "Nelly has not troubled herself to write to me too often," observed George. "My last two letters are unanswered. I think she might have"

"They do say Nelly have heard summut about you," interrupted the farmer, speaking very loudly on account of the noise of the street.

George led him down a quieter thoroughfare.

Something to my disadvantage ?" Ay, so mother says." "From whom ?"

"Oh, only from Mr. Ferris, that's all." "What! you amaze me! Has he been down there since I came away ?"

"I rayther think he has."

A sudden ice-bolt was it that shot through George's heart that instant?

"Aha! Ferris at Sandown privately!— whispering to my betrothed; what does this mean ?"

He had never entertained a doubt in that direction. But now, as by a flash, he saw all. "The crafty, perfidious, heartless villain! This, then, was why he drew me away from my home and my happy prospects, separated me from my best friends, and fixed me here to share the credit of his dishonest scheming. And I have been so easily fooled!"

"Ferris made Nelly believe I don't know what of you; and I'm told-" William stopped, and looked hard at his friend, who could not find courage at once to ask for more information. But the character of Ferris being now clear to George, and the weak points of Nelly's only too familiar, his fears instinctively comprehended that he had as good as lost her. Chagrin at his own folly was not one of the least bitter of the ingredients in the cup of his sorrow.

"Didst thou not know that Ferris was backwards and forwards to Sandown ?” asked the farmer.

"Never for a moment suspected it! He must have gone between the Fridays and the Mondays. It was his regular habit to be absent from business on Saturdays; but as it was his habit, of course it gave me no concern. Besides, I never dreamt that he had any designs there."

"Nor I-nor any of us but mothertill yesterday evening. You might have knocked me down with a feather when Cousin Sophy told me

'Sophy Blyth ?"

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'Ay, at Redbridge. I called to see after Nelly and her mother; they were staying at Sophy's have been often visiting there since you went."

"Well ?"

"It be none well, George; it be ill; and so thou'lt say. It might be worse in one way, for sure. But so as it is it is, and crying won't alter it. And now, if thou be a man"-here the farmer clapped George sharply and rousingly on the shoulder," read that paper, and say'Good riddance of a troublesome, silly piece of vanity; and look thee out a better wife than ever Nelly Adams would have made."

With indescribable amazement, by the light of a street lamp, George read Nelly's marriage certificate. He lost not a word or a letter of it. In silence he returned it to William.

"Can this man have a soul?" was his first unspoken thought.

William was much relieved at his friend's taking the matter so quietly. He had expected a very heart-breaking explosion, and had dreaded it uncommonly. But George was no shallow raver of his deep feelings. He had loved this fickle girl so passionately, so faithfully! But she was proved unworthy of a noble heart -her truth and love a rope of sand. "So farewell, Nelly!" he proudly and firmly exclaimed.

"That's right, now; bid her farewell, and think no more about her," said William.

"I trust this unholy marriage of your sister's may have a better continuance and conclusion than its commencement promises. Whenever you write to her, or see her, tell her I say so."

"It will be long before I shall have anything to say to her again, I can promise thee," said William, speaking as if he most decidedly meant it; and then, with a tremendous yawn, he said he shouldn't be the worse of a sleep, after his long night's travel.

A constable remained in charge of Mr. Ferris's offices in Randal's-buildings, and George did not take the farmer there, but saw him safely lodged in a respectable hotel, and left him to repose.

George was not sorry to be free from close observation. Deeply absorbed in melancholy thought, he strode along the broad and crowded pavements of Holborn, Ludgate-hill, and Cheapside, his hat pressed down over his eyes, and every second breath a sigh. Yet he walked firm and erect, as if resolved to vindicate the strength of his own manhood.

length he paused, with the famous Silent Highway before him. He stood long gazing on the darkly-flowing water, the anguish of his spirit overflowing in many a well-remembered verse

"Ah! but what misery is it to know this!
Or, knowing it, to want the mind's erection
In such extremes! Well, I will once more
strive,

In spite of this black cloud, myself to be,
And shake the fever off that thus shakes me."

His fancy conjured up the fair being who had deceived and slighted him-"Why did the gods give thee a heavenly form, And earthly thoughts to make thee proud of

it ?

Why do I ask? "Tis now the known disease
That beauty hath, to bear too deep a sense
Of her own self-conceived excellence.

O, hadst thou known the worth of Heaven's
rich gift,

Thou wouldst have turned it to a truer use."

its emotions, to retire upon poetry for It was the nature of his mind, in all strength, consolation, and sympathy; and never was his memory more active, or his imagination more vivid, than in his grief his deep heart of love had, after all, been for the loss of Nelly; perhaps because less intensely engrossed by the Beauty of Sandown than he was aware of. It was a very happy circumstance that he was woe, but not so utterly crushed by his that he could poetise over it.

He heard Bow bells chime mid

night, and then slowly traced his way back to his dreary state chamber in Randal's-buildings, his melancholy footsteps timing one of Rare Ben Johnson's exquisite lyrics that he was repeating as a musician lingers over sweet cadences that have taken strong possession of ear and fancy.

"Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt

tears;

Yet slower yet; O, faintly, gentle springs! List to the heavy part the music bears, Woe weeps out her division when she sings. Droop herbs and flowers,

Fall grief in showers,

Our beauties are not ours;

O, I could still,

Like melting snow upon some craggy hill,
Drop, drop, drop, drop,
Since Nature's pride is now a wither'd daffodil."

There was one point of view that did not fail to impress itself on George's

Meanwhile, at No. 2, round the corner, the Hue and Cry (offering a reward of £100 for the apprehension of Ferris and his clerk) had been circulated from hand to hand in the cookshop, and a casual lodger in the house, one of Mickle's boon companions, stood up to read it. A girl of all-work and a washer woman listened outside a halfopen passage door, through which poor Bessy Lee glided, and stood to hear the whole of that terrible document, with one hand pressed to her bosom, and the other resting on a penny pie-tin, to steady her shaking frame. Then back, like a frightened hare, she flew to her room up-stairs.

"O, Grandmother! they offer £100 for Mr. Ferris and Mickle. Do you think anybody will be found base enough to betray them? Do you think they will be taken ? And if they are, what will become of them ?"

Bessy had flung herself on her knees beside the helpless old lady, who sat chained by paralysis in the only corner of the mean room that was not exposed to draughts.

Mrs. Lee was eighty-five-had been the wife of a scientific and talented man, who died young, before having achieved enough of wealth-after his debts were liquidated-to pay for his own funeral. Ah, what a long, weary struggle with grim poverty had his widow! but the bitterest pang which her still proud feelings experienced, was being at last compelled to ward off actual starvation by

The old woman had but one cotton gown to wear-all patched and darned over, so that little of the original material remained and her cap, of plain white net, held on by a broad, black band of rusty velvet, had been washed and ironed every Saturday time out of mind, but yet one might walk far to see another such picture of clean, respectable, dignified old age in extreme poverty as Bessy's grandmother presented. Her face was strong in all its lineaments, enduringfirm, and not even yet, at eighty-five, devoid of the high spirit of her better days.

When she heard of the Hue and Crywhen Bessy's frail and wasted figure cowered beside her knees, and the pale, pinched face sought a refuge, as it were, on her bony hands, and the eager voice sought for comfort in the heart's great need, the poor old lady tried to reason with the sufferer, while her own overtasked nature was fast giving way.

"My dear," she said, "this is very foolish, and not right. Mickle may not be taken, or not proved guilty; and if the worst happens, the penalty is not so heavy now as it was in my young days. Then, it was not imprisonment with hard labour, or transportation-but death. Ah! they were cruel times. Come, come, look up, and hope the best."

"I will-I will!" sobbed Bessy, and arose, and lit the fire, and made tea for her grandmother, and sat down to work; but the tears fell fast on her sewing, and she had hardly the strength to wipe them away.

Bessy sat up at night to make up for lost time during her illness. She finished a bundle of shirts, and proceeded to take