but I _did_ spend some, I confess, for there are wretches who deserve our charity. And here, and here, and here you have the property out of which Abel and I conspired to cheat you--at least, the chief part of it; the rest we will soon get possession of, having laid the villain in limbo. Here, uncle Zachariah, take them, and be as philanthropic as you please; we have no fear of you, now your familiar is tied up; take your property, and much good may it do you. As for me, I am content to take Ellen--that is, if you have no objection." This was a turn of circumstances that confounded me more than ever; and, verily, I knew not whether I was standing on my head or feet. I stood staring Jonathan in the face, without saying a word, until the youth was seized with the idea that the surprise of the thing had turned my wits; at which, being alarmed, he took me again by the hand, and said, with the tears in his eyes,-- "Oh, my dear uncle! do consider it is nothing more than a joke, and that I never meant to offend thee." "No," said I, "thee did not. Therefore thee shall have it all, and thee shall marry the maiden." And with that, being seized with uncommon generosity, or perhaps not well knowing what I did, I put into his hands the conveyance of the house, the bank-bills, and other papers which he had given me but a moment before, and turned to leave the house. "Stay, uncle--I am just going to be married," said he; and "Stay, Zachariah!" said a dozen others; when some one suddenly calling out, "Let him go; he is afraid of being turned out of meeting if he witnesses the ceremony," I was suffered to obey the impulses of the spirit within me, and walk out of the house; which I did without exactly knowing what I was doing. To tell the honest truth--as, indeed, I have been trying to do all along--I was in a kind of maze and bewilderment of mind, which the first shock of ruin had produced, and which Jonathan's story rather increased than diminished. The effect of this was divided in my brain with the impression of the various proofs of ingratitude and baseness to which the day had given birth, the latter, however, being greatly preponderant. Of one feeling only I had entire consciousness, and that was a hearty disgust of philanthropy, coupled with a sense of shame at having been so basely cheated as I seemed to have been on all sides. I had been cheated out of my senses, as the saying is; and the only cure for me was to be cheated into them again; which was not an agreeable reflection, the whole affair being a reproach on my good sense.