CHAPTER XII. WHAT DAISY DID. The Arrest--Doubt and Love--Daisy and the Necklace--The Search--The Heart of Daisy Snarle. CHAPTER XIII. IN THE TOMBS. The Author's Summer Residence--The Egyptian Prison--Without and Within--A Picture--Sunshine in shadow--Joe Wilkes and his unique Proposal--Gloomy Prospects--The Face at the Cell-window. CHAPTER XIV. A CLOUD WITH A SILVER LINING. The Strange Visit--The Lawyer--Walters and Mr. Flint--The Clouds--A Strip of Sunshine--Mortimer. CHAPTER XV. IMPORTANT DISCLOSURES. A Picture--The Lawyer's Note--Mr. Hardwill once more--The Scene at the Law Office--Mr. Flint _Hors du Combat_--Face to Face. CHAPTER XVI. THE OLD HOUSE BY THE SEA. Clap-trap--John Flint--The Old House--Joe Wilkes--Strephon and Chloe--Tim enjoying himself--Edward Walters and Little Bell--A Last Word EPILOGUE. TO THE UNFORTUNATE READER. In this little Extravaganza, I have done just what I intended. I have attempted to describe, in an auto-biographical sort of way, a well-meaning, but somewhat vain young gentleman, who, having flirted desperately with the Magazines, takes it into his silly head to write a novel, all the chapters of which are laid before the reader, with some running criticism by T. James Barescythe, Esquire, the book-noticer of "The Morning Glory," ("a journal devoted to the Fine Arts and the Amelioration of all Mankind,") and the type of a certain class which need not be distinctly specified for recognition. I have endeavored to make the novel of my literary hero such a one as a young man with fine taste and crude talent might produce; and I think I have succeeded. It is certainly sufficiently unfinished. In drawing the character of Barescythe, the point of my quill may have pierced a friend; and if you ask, like Ludovico, "What shall be said of thee?" I shall answer, like Othello, "Why, anything: An honorable murderer, if you will; For nought I did in hate, but all in honor." The only audacious thing I have done is the writing of this preface. If there is anything more stupid than a "preface," it is a book-critic. If anything _could_ be more stupid than a book-critic, it would be a preface. But, thank heaven, there is not. In saying this, I refer to a particular critic; for I would not, for the sake of a tenth edition, malign in such a wholesale manner those capital good fellows of the press--those _verbal accoucheurs_ who are so pleasantly officious at the birth of each new genius. Not I. I have "A fellow-feeling" and a love for them, which would seem like a bid for their good nature, if expressed here.