had dared to forget the Providence of God--he had arrogated his fate to himself: by the first bridge he had taken his resolve; by the last he stood in awe at the result--stood no less poor--no less abject--equally in rags and squalor; but was his crest as haughty and his eye as fearless, for was his conscience as free and his honour as unstained? Those arches of stone--those rivers that rolled between, seemed to him then to take a more mystic and typical sense than belongs to the outer world--they were the bridges to the Rivers of his Life. Plunged in thoughts so confused and dim that he could scarcely distinguish, through the chaos, the one streak of light which, perhaps, heralded the reconstruction or regeneration of the elements of his soul;--two passengers halted, also by his side. “You will be late for the debate,” said one of them to the other. “Why do you stop?” “My friend,” said the other, “I never pass this spot without recalling the time when I stood here without a son, or, as I thought, a chance of one, and impiously meditated self-destruction.” “You!--now so rich--so fortunate in repute and station--is it possible? How was it? A lucky chance?--a sudden legacy?” “No: Time, Faith, and Energy--the three Friends God has given to the Poor!” The men moved on; but Morton, who had turned his face towards them, fancied that the last speaker fixed on him his bright, cheerful eye, with a meaning look; and when the man was gone, he repeated those words, and hailed them in his heart of hearts as an augury from above. Quickly, then, and as if by magic, the former confusion of his mind seemed to settle into distinct shapes of courage and resolve. “Yes,” he muttered; “I will keep this night’s appointment--I will learn the secret of these men’s life. In my inexperience and destitution, I have suffered myself to be led hitherto into a partnership, if not with vice and crime, at least with subterfuge and trick. I awake from my reckless boyhood--my unworthy palterings with my better self. If Gawtrey be as I dread to find him--if he be linked in some guilty and hateful traffic; with that loathsome accomplice--I will--” He paused, for his heart whispered, “Well, and even so,--the guilty man clothed and fed thee!” “I will,” resumed his thought, in answer to his heart--“I will go on my knees to him to fly while there is yet time, to work--beg--starve--perish even--rather than lose the right to look man in the face without a blush, and kneel to his God without remorse!”