'How came you to send those heavy boxes here, Jones?' said Owen Lloyd. 'Would it not have been better to have sent them direct to Portsmouth, where the vessel calls?' 'I had not quite made up my mind to return to America then; and I knew they would be safer here than anywhere else.' 'When do you mean to take them away? We are so badly off for room, that they terribly hamper us.' 'This evening, about nine o'clock. I have hired a smack at Hythe to take us, bag and baggage, down the river to meet the liner which calls off Portsmouth to-morrow. I wish we could persuade you to go with us.' 'Thank you, Jones,' replied Owen in a dejected tone. 'I have very little to hope for here; still my heart clings to the old country.' I had heard enough; and hastily rising, intimated a wish to look at the timber at once. Mr Lloyd immediately rose, and Jones and his wife left the cottage to return to Hythe at the same time that we did. I marked a few pieces of timber, and promising to send for them in the morning, hastened away. A mountain seemed removed from off my breast: I felt as if I had achieved a great personal deliverance. Truly a wonderful interposition of Providence, I thought, that has so signally averted the fatal consequences likely to have resulted from the thoughtless imprudence of Owen Lloyd, in allowing his house to be made, however innocently, a receptacle for stolen goods, at the solicitations, too, of a man whose character he knew to be none of the purest. He had had a narrow escape, and might with perfect truth exclaim-- 'There's a Divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will.' The warrants of which I was the bearer the London police authorities had taken care to get indorsed by a magistrate of the county of Hampshire, who happened to be in London, so that I found no difficulty in arranging effectually for the capture and safe custody of Jones and his assistants when he came to fetch his booty.