languages but in botany, heraldry, and many other branches of learning. His life seemed fair and his future bright: but a change was at hand. He had not resided long at Knaresborough before he became acquainted with three persons most unlike himself in every way. These men were Henry Terry, Richard Houseman, and Daniel Clarke. Houseman was a flax-dresser. Clarke was a travelling jeweller. All of them were intemperate; and it is supposed that the beginning of Eugene Aram's downfall was the appetite for drink. The confederacy that he formed with these men is not easily explicable, and probably it never has been rightly explained. The accepted statement is that it was a confederacy for fraud and theft. Clarke was reported to be the heir presumptive to a large fortune. He purchased goods, was punctual in his payments, and established his credit. He was supposed to be making purchases for a merchant in London. He dealt largely in gold and silver plate and in watches, and soon he made a liberal use of his credit to accumulate valuable objects. In 1744 he disappeared, and he never was seen or heard of again. His frauds became known, and the houses of Aram and Houseman, suspected as his associates, were searched, but nothing was found to implicate either of them. Soon after this event Aram left Knaresborough--deserting his wife--and proceeded to London, where for two years he had employment as a teacher of Latin. He was subsequently an usher at the boarding school of the Rev. Anthony Hinton, at Hayes, in Middlesex, and there it was observed that he displayed an extraordinary and scrupulous tenderness and solicitude as to the life and safety of even worms and insects--which he would remove from the garden walks and put into places of security. At a later period he found employment as a transcriber of acts of Parliament, for registration in chancery. Still later he became an usher at the Free School of Lynn, in Norfolk, where, among other labours, he undertook to make a comparative lexicon, and with this purpose collated over 3000 words in English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Celtic. He had ample opportunity to leave England but he never did so. At length, in 1759, a labourer who was digging for limestone, at a place known as St. Robert's Cave, Thistle Hill, near Knaresborough, came upon a human skeleton, bent double and buried in the earth. Suspicion was aroused. These bones, it was surmised, might be those of Daniel Clarke. His mysterious disappearance and his associates were remembered. The authorities sent forth and arrested Terry, Houseman, and Eugene Aram, and those persons were brought to their trial at York. A bold front would have saved them, for the evidence against them was weak. Aram stood firm, but Houseman quailed, and presently he turned "state's evidence" and denounced Aram as the murderer of Clarke. The accused scholar spoke in his own defence, and with astonishing skill, but he failed to defeat the direct and