Clement Archer, Esq., was a stern, unbending, business man. Strictly moral in his walk before men, he required all around him to show the same regard for the welfare of society. With a heart filled with benevolence, though veiled with an air of sternness, he received Bradley in his counting-house, as Henry Murray, knowing it to be a fictitious name, for Spencer scorned to impose on his benefactor in this respect, and though Bradley’s past history was a sealed book which his employer never attempted to pry into, he could not help fancying some misdemeanor had driven the young man from his home and friends. He contented himself, therefore, by placing a strict watch upon his conduct, but after months had passed away, indeed, years, and saw Henry the same attentive, hard-laboring clerk he was at first, his patron took pleasure in showing him favor, and in placing the most unlimited confidence in him. Thus had the three years glided by. That Henry was comparatively happy, we admit, but many an agonizing night had passed, ere he acquired even this slight tranquility, and shall we confess it, kind reader? the stolen miniature, the witness of his involuntary crime, was cherished as a precious relic, for instead of serving to remind him of his errors, and fill him with shame, it was regarded as a mute angel, that had snatched him from ignominy and vice. And who could blame him for loving to look upon that fair countenance, with its deep and eloquent eyes forever speaking of the intellectual worth within? It was not so much the beautiful form of the features, that arrested the gaze, as the whole-soul expression that shone around them. Long would the infatuated youth gaze on the memento of his crime, but there was little penitence in his looks, and not one thought of sorrow for the grief the loss of it must have given the fair original, for enclosed in the back was a braid of dark hair, slightly silvered with grey, and beneath was engraved, “from a fond mother to her daughter, on her sixteenth birthday.” Bradley had carefully avoided every print which he thought would be likely to contain the intelligence of the robbery, and as no communication passed between himself and the perpetrators on this subject, he was consequently ignorant of the amount abstracted, or of the names of the sufferers.