When we met we were a little embarrassed. She was startled by the success of her former _ruse_ and concealment. I was disconcerted, if not somewhat humbled, by the then evident truth that I had been all along known to her while I had been, as I thought, pumping her. This embarrassment, however, soon yielded to business. She gave me an insight into a plot of which I had hitherto not had a complete idea. She could not positively assert that her husband had been murdered. On that head she had her suspicions, as others had. All she could say distinctly was, that the Newtons had burned down their house. The fact was, that her husband had been embarrassed. The Newtons had seen this, and proposed to him an elaborate scheme for defrauding the insurance company. The same means would also enable him to get time from his creditors, who might afterwards be arranged with, or "satisfied" by a bankruptcy, as thereafter should seem desirable. Meanwhile the Newtons and he were to take parts in the great scheme of fraud. They settled between them the extension of the premises and the burning of the manufactory, the claim upon the company, and the division of the spoil. All these arrangements had been carried out, as the reader is aware, except the last part of the programme, which was the subject of another fraud, illustrating a truth I have so frequently insisted upon--that there is no honour among thieves. Newtons might or might not have overtaken Paterson after he left the Dove, who, being drunk, could not walk towards his home very quickly. They might or might not have pitched him over the canal-bridge into the water; but it was clear that they conceived his death gave an opportunity for cheating him, or rather his widow, out of his share of the proceeds of their joint crime. Mrs. Paterson was in her husband's confidence about the destruction of his premises. This was a little circumstance the Newtons were unacquainted with. On the other hand, Paterson had often told them that he did not let his wife know every thing, and had so frequently spoken in disrespectful terms of the gentle sex (especially on the score of speech or intrigue), that he led them to believe his wife knew nothing about the conspiracy; but in point of fact she had been informed all about it. She had held her peace, since Paterson's death, to see how Messrs. Newton would behave when they got the insurance money, secretly having resolved all the while that if they played her false, or did not hand over to her what she considered her fair share, or what it was arranged her husband should have, she would "let the cat out of the bag," and assist the officers of justice in raising that firm to the level of a platform outside the county gaol, where Mr. Jack Ketch had previously been known to perform in a few dismal tragedies. When the Newtons got the money she boldly made her demand upon them. They affected to be indignant, and they menaced her