“He suspects you of gaming and drinking; but I assured him, very confidently, that such was not the case. On one of these heads I could speak confidently, for I met Kingsley the other night--the night of Mother Delaney's party--who was hot and heavy against you because you refused to lend him money for such purposes. I was more indulgent, lent him the money, went with him to the house, and returned home with a pocket full of specie, sufficient to set up a small banking-operation of my own.” “You! can it be possible!” “True; and no such dull way of spending an evening either. I got home in the small hours, and found Julia delirious. I haven't had such a fright for a stolen pleasure, Heaven knows when. There was the doctor, and there my eternal mother-in-law, and my poor little wife as near the grave as could be! But the circumstance of refusing the money to Kingsley, knowing his object, made me confident that gaming was not the cause of your night-stalking, and so I told the old gentleman.” “And what did he say?” “Shook his head mournfully, and reasoned in this manner: 'He has no pecuniary necessities, has no oppressive toils, and has never had any disappointment of heart. There is nothing to make him behave so, and look so, but guilt--GUILT!'” I repeated the last word with an entire change in the tone of my voice. Light, lively, and playful before, I spoke that single word with a stern solemnity, and, bending toward him, my eye keenly traversed the mazes of his countenance. “HE HAS IT!” I thought to myself, as his head drooped forward, and his whole frame shuddered momentarily. “But”--here my tones again became lively and playful--I even laughed--“I told the old man that I fancied I could hit the nail more certainly on the head. In short, I said I could pretty positively say what was the cause of your conduct and condition.” “Ah!” and, as he uttered this monosyllable, he made a feeble effort to rise from his seat, but sunk back, and again fixed his eye upon the floor in visible emotion. “Yes! I told him--was I not right?--that a woman was at the bottom of it all!” He started to his feet. His face was averted from me. “Ha! was I not right? I knew it! I saw through it from the first; and, though I did not tell the old man THAT, I was pretty sure that you were trespassing upon your neighbor's grounds. Ha! what say you? Was I not right? Were you not stealing to forbidden places--playing the snake, on a small scale, in some blind man's Eden? Ha! ha! what say you to that? I am right, am I not? eh?” I clapped him on the shoulder as I spoke. His face had been half averted from me while I was speaking; but now it turned upon me, and his glance met mine, teeming with inquisitive horror. “No! no! you are not right!” he faltered out; “it is not so. Nothing is the matter with me! I am quite well--quite! I will see my father, and set him right.”