A time at length arrived when the supplies purveyed by Mrs Dempster from her own earnings were quite incompetent to satisfy this living vampire. She saw him daily rush from her presence, threatening that he would bring her to the extremity of disgrace by the methods he would take to obtain money. She lived for weeks in the agonising fear that the next moment would bring her news of some awful crime committed by his hand, and for which he was likely to suffer the last penalty of the law. She hardly knew who or what were his associates; but occasionally she learned, from mutterings in his sleep, that his practices were of the most flagitious and debased kind. He seemed to be the leader or director of a set of wretches who made a livelihood by midnight burglary. At length, one day he came home at an unusual hour, accompanied by three strangers, with whom he entered into conversation in the next room. Between that apartment and the room in which he was sitting, there was a door, which, being never used, was locked up. Through the thin panels, she overheard a scheme laid for entering the house of ——, a villa in the neighbourhood, in order to rob the tenant, whom they described as a gentleman just returned from the East Indies, with a great quantity of plate and other valuables. One of the persons in conference had visited the house, through the kindness of a servant, to whom he had made up as a sweetheart; and he therefore was able to lead the attack through such a channel as rendered success almost certain. “The nabob,” said this person, “sleeps in a part of the house distant from the room in which his boxes are for the present deposited. But should he attempt to give us any disturbance, we have a remedy for that, you know.” And here the listener’s blood ran cold at hearing a pistol cocked. From all that she could gather, her husband was only to keep watch at the outside of the house, while the rest should enter in search of the booty. It is impossible to describe the horror with which she heard the details of the plot. Her mind was at first in such a whirl of distracted feeling, that she hardly knew where she stood; but as the scheme was to be executed that very evening, she saw it necessary to exert herself quickly and decisively, and, therefore, she immediately went to the house of a friend, and wrote an anonymous note to the person most concerned, warning him of a design (she could use no more specific language) which she knew was entertained against a certain part of his property, and recommending him to have it removed to some more secure part of his house. To make quite sure of this note being delivered in time, she took it herself to the gate, and left it with the porter, whom she strictly enjoined to give it immediately into the hands of his master. She then went home, and spent an evening of misery more bitter than the cup of death itself. She had formerly passed many a lonely night at her cheerless fireside, while waiting