When Adam Brown received intelligence that his guilt was discovered from a companion, he was carousing with others in a low gambling-house. Horror seized him, and he hurried from the room, but returned in a few minutes. "_We'll have another!_" he exclaimed, in a tone of frenzy--and another was brought. He half filled a glass--he raised it to his lips--he dashed into it a deadly poison, and, ere they could stay his hand, the fatal draught was swallowed. He had purchased a quantity of arsenic when he rushed from the house. His fellow-gamblers were thronging around him, when his injured wife and her grey-headed father entered the room. "Away, tormentors!" he exclaimed, as his glazed eyes fell upon them, and he dashed his hand before his face. "My husband! my dear husband!" cried Mary, flinging her arms around his neck. "Look on me, speak to me!" He gazed on her face--he grasped her hand. "Mary, my injured Mary!" he exclaimed convulsively, "can _you_ forgive me--_you--you_? O God; I was once innocent! Forgive me, dearest!--for our child's sake, curse not its guilty father!" "Husband!--Adam!" she cried, wringing his hand--"come with me, love, come--leave this horrid place--you have nothing to fear--your debt is paid." "Paid!" he exclaimed, wildly--"Ha! ha!--Paid!" These were his last words--convulsions came upon him, the film of death passed over his eyes, and his troubled spirit fled. She clung round his neck--she yet cried "Speak to me!"--she refused to believe that he was dead, and her reason seemed to have fled with his spirit. She was taken from his body and conveyed home. The agony of grief subsided into a stupor approaching imbecility. She was unconscious of all around; and, within three weeks from the death of her husband, the broken spirit of Mary Douglas found rest, and her father returned in sorrow with her helpless orphan to Teviotdale.