Prophecies sometimes come true; or, rather let me say, that observations made perhaps without a definite meaning, occasionally become prophetical as proved by the event. When Mr. Longstaff turned Mrs. Clink out of her house on the eventful night we have just alluded to, it will not perhaps have been forgotten that she pointed towards the little bed in which our then little hero lay, and addressing the steward, exclaimed, “_There's a sting in that cradle for you yet!_” Mr. Longstaff himself remembered these words, and trembled when he found to what influence and station the Squire had exalted his son. And though, I verily believe, notwithstanding his deserts, that Colin would never have molested him, but rather have forgiven and returned good for evil, yet, as though retributive justice was not to be turned aside, it oddly enough was discovered by Colin and Mr. Lupton, on examining his accounts, that certain defalcations to a large extent and of long standing existed, and by the produce of which knavery it was supposed he had contrived to bribe a sufficient number of independent ten pounders in a neighbouring town to get his son, Mr. Chatham B. Longstaff, returned to Parliament, as well as to portion off his two daughters, Miss Æneasina Laxton and Miss Magota, on their respective marriages; one with a well-to-do musician, and the other a ditto draper and haberdasher. On this discovery the steward was peremptorily discharged, on Mr. Lupton's authority, by Colin in person, and afterwards threatened with a prosecution. But as he made himself quite as humble as he had before been proud, said a great many pitiful things about the dignity of his family and the ruin of his character, as well as promised to pay the several sums back again, if not before, at least very soon after his son should have got a place under Government, the Squire consented, under the influence of his son's persuasions, to let the old boy off and suffer the grievance to be hushed up by them, and misrepresented for the better by Mr. Longstaff himself and his clever family. I am not certain, but to the best of my memory Mr. Longstaff eventually established himself as landlord of a small inn in a country town some sixty or seventy miles from the scene of his former exploits. For this duty, in fact, he was by nature quite as well, if not better qualified, than for some other of a more ambitious nature which he had previously taken upon himself.