scanty diet, coarse enough to shock even a beggar. What wonder, then, if the craving of the stomach should allow her no escape from downright theft! Who is there that could resist? Where is the honesty that could not, under such circumstances, find an argument to justify larceny? Every evening Miss Bradly came to spend an hour or so with them. The route from the school to her boarding-house wound by Mr. Peterkin's residence, and the temptation to talk to the young ladies, who were emphatically the belles of the neighborhood, was too great for resistance. This lady was of that class of females which we meet in every quarter of the globe,--of perfectly kind intentions, yet without the independence necessary for their open and free expression. Bred in the North, and having from her infancy imbibed the spirit of its free institutions, in her secret soul she loathed the abomination of slavery, every pulse of her heart cried out against it, yet with a strange compliance she lived in its midst, never once offering an objection or an argument against it. It suited _her policy_ to laugh with the pro-slavery man at the fanaticism of the Northern Abolitionist. With a Judas-like hypocrisy, she sold her conscience for silver; and for a mess of pottage, bartered the noble right of free expression. 'Twas she, base renegade from a glorious cause, who laughed loudest and repeated wholesale libels and foul aspersions upon the able defenders of abolition--noble and generous men, lofty philanthropists, who are willing, for the sake of principle, to wear upon their brows the mark of social and political ostracism! But a day is coming, a bright millennial day, when the names of these inspired prophets shall be inscribed proudly upon the litany of freedom; when their noble efforts for social reform shall be told in wondering pride around the winter's fire. Then shall their fame shine with a glory which no Roman tradition can eclipse. Freed from calumny, the names of Parker, Seward and Sumner, will be ranked, as they deserve to be, with Washington, Franklin and Henry. All glory to the American Abolitionists. Though they must now possess their souls in patience, and bear the brand of social opprobrium, yet will posterity accord them the meed of everlasting honor. They "who sow in dishonor shall be raised in glory." Already the watchman upon the tower has discerned the signal. A light beameth in the East, which no man can quench. A fire has broken forth, which needs only a breath to fan it into a flame. The eternal law of sovereign right will vindicate itself. In the hour of feasting and revelry the dreadful bolt of retribution fell upon Gomorrah. CHAPTER IV. CONVERSATION WITH MISS BRADLY--A LIGHT BREAKS THROUGH THE DARKNESS.