“It is no time for anger,” I replied to his hot exclamations; “come, and let me in. I want your advice. I am ruined.” My uncle was thoroughly good at heart; when he came down with a light, and saw the ghost he had let in, he was very little better than his visitor. He shook, as if old age were come upon him suddenly, while I tried to tell my tale. “My Kitty gone, and gone of her own accord!” he cried, as if he, and not I, had lost her. “Man, you must be mad. Are you walking in your sleep?” “God send that I may be! But when shall I awake?” The old man’s distress, and his trembling anguish, let loose all the floods of mine; I fell against the wall, where he hung his hats and saws, and sobbed like a woman who has lost her only child. “Come, come,” he said; “we shall both be ashamed of this. Your darling is not dead, my boy; but only lured away by some d——d trick. Don’t blame yourself, or her. I will answer for her, sooner than I would for myself in this bad world. You shall have her back again, Kit; you shall have her back again. There is a God, who never lets us perish, while we stick to Him.” “I have not stuck to Him. I have stuck to her.” The truth of my words came upon me like a flash. It was the first time I had even thought of this. “Never mind. He knows; and He meant it so,” my uncle replied with some theology of his own; “no man will be punished for doing what the Bible orders. You’ll see, my dear boy, it will all come right. You will live to laugh at this infernal trick. And I hope to the Lord, that I shall be alive to grin with you. Cheer up, old fellow. What would your Kitty think, to see you knock under to a bit of rigmarole? You must keep up your spirits for poor Kitty’s sake.” To see an old man show more pluck than a young one, and to take in a little of his fine faith, set me on my pins again, more than any one would believe; and I followed him into his kitchen, where the remnants of the fire were not quite dead. “Now blow it up, Kit,” he said; “and put a bit of wood in. Tabby always leaves it in this cupboard. Ah, that was a fine tree, that old Jargonel! It lived on its bark, I believe, for about a score of years, and you helped to split it up, when you were courting Kitty. You shall court her again, my boy, and have another honeymoon, as they’ve cut yours short in this confounded way. Now, make a good fire, while I put my breeches on. You look like a ghost, that has never had a bit to eat. And I don’t suppose you have touched a morsel to speak of, since breakfast. ‘Never say die’ is my motto, Kit. We’ll be at the Police-office, by three o’clock. We can do nothing till then, you know.”