Reports have spread among the professedly knowing that Marston can never have made away with all his property in so few years. And the manner being so invisible, the charge becomes stronger. Thus, labouring between the pain of misfortune and the want of means to resent suspicion, his cheerless chamber is all he can now call his home. But he has two good friends left-Franconia, and the old negro Bob. Franconia has procured a municipal badge for Daddy; and, through it (disguised) he seeks and obtains work at stowing cotton on the wharfs. His earnings are small, but his soul is large, and embued with attachment for his old master, with whom he will share them. Day by day the old slave seems to share the feelings of his master,--to exhibit a solicitous concern for his comfort. Earning his dollars and twenty-five cents a day, he will return when the week has ended, full of exultation, spread out his earnings with childlike simplicity, take thirty cents a day for himself, and slip the remainder into Marston's pocket. How happy he seems, as he watches the changes of Marston's countenance, and restrains the gushing forth of his feelings! It was on one of those nights upon which Daddy had received his earnings, that Marston sat in his cheerless chamber, crouched over the faint blaze of a few pieces of wood burning on the bricks of his narrow fire-place, contemplating the eventful scenes of the few years just passed. The more he contemplated the more it seemed like a dream; his very head wearied with the interminable maze of his difficulties. Further and further, as he contemplated, did it open to his thoughts the strange social and political mystery of that more strange institution for reducing mankind to the level of brutes. And yet, democracy, apparently honest, held such inviolable and just to its creed; which creed it would defend with a cordon of steel. The dejected gentleman sighs, rests his head on his left hand, and his elbow on the little table at his side. Without, the weather is cold and damp; an incessant rain had pattered upon the roof throughout the day, wild and murky clouds hang their dreary festoons along the heavens, and swift scudding fleeces, driven by fierce, murmuring winds, bespread the prospect with gloom that finds its way into the recesses of the heart.