monopolized my attention until then--I once more, after so long an interval, seated myself in the library window, under pretence of seeking a passage in Herder, which I had quoted for Julia Sainsbury the preceding evening, and awaited the hour of noon. And there, before the clock of the neighbouring church had ceased striking, with the selfsame step, in the same subdued attire in which I saw him four years ago, came gliding up the street the dark, sullen milkman; and there, too, close behind him as ever, followed his shadowy companion! It is in vain to deny it. I could feel my heart beating audibly when I beheld them, as if they were unsubstantial visitants, whose appearance I expected the grave would have interdicted from my eyes for ever. It was a dim, bitter, wintry day, and showers of sleet were drifting heavily on the fierce and angry wind, soaking the man's garments through and through, and sweeping aside the thin habiliments of the female, as though they would tear them from her slender form, and leave it a prey to the keen wrath of the elements. Yet the Pair passed upon their way, seemingly regardless of weather that had banished all other creatures from the streets. As they stopped beneath the window where I sat, I scrutinized them eagerly, to see whether time, or toil, or the terrors of such winters as that now raging, had wrought the work of ruin I would have expected in their frames. In that of the woman there was but little alteration. She was thinner and paler perhaps, and the poorness of her dress betokened no doubt an increase in her sufferings and privations; but her glance, when I could catch it, had more of fiery blackness: her mouth more of compressed determination than when I formerly beheld her. But in Maunsell there was a striking change: his figure was stooped, his cheek hollow, his eye sunk; in a word, his aspect now bore the signs of that mental misery which, on an earlier occasion, I had looked for in one subjected like him to such long, and steady, and undying persecution. Mournful beings! I internally exclaimed, as they proceeded from my sight, whatever sinful sorrow thus serves to link together your discordant existences, it must indeed be of a damning nature, if such a career as yours does not go far to expiate it!