"I will write myself to Mr. Arden," he said, at length, after long thought--"I will write myself, and send off the letter this very night. Colonel Manners, excuse me for one moment. I have but a few lines to write, and will be back with you in a few minutes." Thus saying, he proceeded to his library, and with a hasty hand wrote down that bold and decided charge against the gipsy which was to bring the long apprehended struggle between them to an end at once. Nor did he, in this instance, feel any hesitation. The words had now been spoken to Colonel Manners--the charge had once been made; and it is wonderful the difference that exists between the first and the second time of doing anything that is wrong. He wrote, too, though without any effort at policy, yet with the most exquisite art--with that sort of intuitive cunning which much intercourse with the world, and its worst part, gives to the keen and unscrupulous. He referred, directly, to Mr. Arden's former opinion concerning the culpability of the gipsy; he took shame and reproach to himself for his own incredulity at the time; he declared that subsequent events had shown the wisdom and clear-sightedness of the worthy magistrate's judgment, and he finished his letter by directly accusing the gipsy of the crime which Mr. Arden had suspected, doubting not that vanity would establish in the mind of the magistrate such a prepossession against the object of his wiles as to give everything in the important first steps that were to ensue a strong tendency against Pharold. This done, he read the note over with satisfaction, sealed it, and sent it off, raised his head, and, gazing upon vacancy, thought, for a moment, over all the stern and painful circumstances that surrounded him, and then turned his steps back to the room where he had left Colonel Manners. He had now, however, made the course he was to pursue irretrievable; his son's death had been the only thing wanting to give all his determinations the energy of despair; he had chosen his path, he had passed the Rubicon, and never hereafter, through the course of this history, will be found in his character any of those fluctuating changes of feeling and resolution which we have endeavoured to depict while his fate was unfixed and his purpose undetermined. Deeply, sternly, from that moment, he pursued his way, driven at length to feel that one crime must be succeeded by many more to render it secure.