The hurts of Perkins did not, unhappily, delay the progress of my uncle to that destruction to which his silly wife and knavish lawyer had destined him. His business was brought before the court by the claimants, Messrs. Banks & Tressell; and a brief period only was left him for putting in his answer. When I thought of Julia, I resolved, in spite of all previous difficulties--the sneers of the father, and the more direct, coarse insults of the mother--to make one more effort to rescue him from the fate which threatened him. I felt sure that, for the reasons already given, the merchants would still be willing to effect a compromise which would secure them the principal of their claim, without incurring the delay and risk of litigation. Accordingly, I penned a note to Mr. Clifford, requesting permission to wait upon him at home, at a stated hour. To this I received a cold, brief answer, covering the permission which I sought. I went, but might as well have spared myself the labor and annoyance of this visit. Mrs. Clifford was still in the ascendant--still deaf to reason, and utterly blind to the base position into which her meddlesome interference in the business threw her husband. She had her answer ready; and did not merely content herself with rejecting my overtures, but proceeded to speak in the language of one who really regarded me as busily seeking, by covert ways, to effect the ruin of her family. Her looks and language equally expressed the indignation of a mind perfectly convinced of the fraudulent and evil purposes of the person she addressed. Those of my uncle were scarcely less offensive. A grin of malicious self-gratulation mantled his lips as he thanked me for my counsel, which, he yet remarked, “however wise and good, and well-intended, he did not think it advisable to adopt. He had every confidence in the judgment of Mr. Perkins, who, though without the great legal knowledge of some of his youthful neighbors, had enough for his purposes; and had persuaded him to see the matter in a very different point of view from that in which I was pleased to regard it.”