Oscar, who, during his English career, never was possessor of aught but a slight pittance derived from the sources of his mental labours, and who courted the vain idea, on being made the recipient of £1,000, which he pocketed under false pretences by the underhand sale of Audley Hall, that he was a man of wealth for life, and when safely settled in his trim little cottage, squandered his trifle in a very short time, leaving himself and wife on the mercy of strangers' sympathy, which more or less presents an icy aspect to the eye of the needy. Marjory Mason, who just spent twelve months under Oscar's roof, was fortunate in securing a husband, whose calling kept her during her short lifetime aloof from the imaginative pinches of the uncertain future. It was only when Oscar was forced to evade starvation that he deemed it imperative to accept an appointment in a public school, at the yearly income of one thousand dollars, an office he retained until compelled to resign through courting too great love for the all-powerful monster of mangled might--Intemperance. After a number of years the partaker of maddened love was the imparter of maddened might. With beastly force did Oscar Otwell enter Shandon Cottage on the night of his open dismissal from Waketown Public School, and arousing from sleep his wife, with monster oaths inflicted upon her strokes of abuse which time could never efface. Ah! it was now the actions of youthful frivolity stood before her mountain high and baffled her sickly retort. It was now she pored over her journal of events, which seemed a burthen unbearable for such a fragile frame, and begged the credit side to be for ever closed to her view, whilst she prayed that the debit be left open until she would enter therein all her past debts to him whom she deceived, deluded, denounced, and despised. Next morning mended matters little for Oscar Otwell's wife. Still raging with drunken horror, he lavished upon her torrents of insinuations, which she found impossible to overlook, and which forced her to take refuge in the house of the Reverend Bertram Edgar, near by. This man of true piety, at whose church she had occasionally worshipped, extended the refuge she presently implored, and proved instrumental in securing for her the position of governess in a nobleman's family some miles distant. Disposing of all the household effects, Oscar pocketed their dainty worth, and left Shandon Cottage in earnest pursuit of his wife, intending to again return to their native county in England. His various inquiries regarding her whereabouts proved vain as the vanishing shadow of Venus, and finally, when completely overcome with sober thoughts of his riotous conduct towards the loving and faithful object of his choice, who had risked so much for him, he cursed his very existence.