I mildly protested my wish to live and die where I lay; but they carried me up somewhere, and they put me to bed, and they gave me hot drinks, and I fell into, not a sleep, but a trance, that lasted twenty-odd hours. “Faix! they had a narrow escape of it,” were the first intelligible words I heard on awaking. “They were only just married and druv off when old Dan Dudgeon came up, driving like mad. He was foaming with passion, and said if he went to the gallows for it, he 'd shoot the rascal that abused his hospitality and stole his daughter. The lady left this note for your honor.” It went thus:-- “Dear Mr. Gosslett,--You will, I well know, bear me no ill-will for the little fraud I have practised on you. It was an old engagement, broken off by a momentary imprudence on Tom's part; but as I knew he loved me, it was forgiven. My father would not have ever consented to the match, and we were driven to this strait. I entreat you to forgive and believe me “Most truly yours, “Lizzy MacNamara.” I stole quietly out of Ireland after this, and got over to the Isle of Man, where I learned that my patron had thrown up his Ionian appointment, and I was once again on the world. CONFESSION THE LAST. AS TO LAW. I do not exactly know why I sit down to make this my last confession. I can scarcely be a guide to any one. I even doubt if I can be a warning, for when a man is as miserably unlucky as I have proved myself, the natural inference is to regard him as the exception to the ordinary lot of mortals,--a craft fated to founder ere it was launched. It's all very well to deny the existence of such a thing as luck. It sounds splendidly wise in the Latin moralist to say, “_Non numen habes fortuna si sit prudentia_,” which is the old story of putting the salt on the bird's tail over again, since, I say, we can always assume the “prudentia” where there is the “fortuna,” and in the same way declare that the unlucky man failed because he was deficient in that same gift of foresight. Few men knew life so thoroughly in every condition, and under every aspect, as the first Napoleon, and he invariably asked, when inquiring into the fitness of a man for a great command, “Is he lucky?” To my own thinking, it would be as truthful to declare that there was no element of luck in whist, as to say there was no such thing as luck in life. Now, all the “prudentia” in the world will not give a man four by honors; and though a good player may make a better fight with a bad hand than an indifferent performer, there is that amount of badness occasionally dealt out that no skill can compensate; and do what he may, he must lose the game.