he had faithfully paid his bill, and even asked for it, before it was presented;' but this impulse of magnanimous friendship vanished when he came to remember how much he had been imposed upon in relation to the youth's true character, by some deception Elsie Bell thought fit to play upon him, under colour of admitting him to the secret. The poet also, who, in the loss of Hyland, wept that of his warmest admirer, contended 'that he sang better, and had a more refined literary taste, than any body he ever knew.' Nay, even Captain Loring, who had begun to esteem him as the apple of his eye, was converted into a furious foe, which was owing, in a great measure, to the discovery of the young man's political inclinings, though his anger was sharpened and augmented by Miss Falconer, who took occasion, for a purpose of her own, to reveal what the Captain had never dreamed of himself. She gave him to understand, what was indeed nothing more than true, that his ungrateful protegé had endeavoured to detach Catherine's affections from her brother, and divert them upon himself,--an assurance that infuriated the old soldier, whose wrath was not much mollified when Miss Falconer succeeded in making him aware how much his own extravagant patronage of the impostor might have been construed into almost positive encouragement of his presumption. But bitter as was the worthy veteran's anger, it was as capricious as his love had been. Whenever he laid his eyes upon the unfinished painting, which he commonly did a dozen times a day, he would begin to bewail and admire together, and swear 'that his young Haman What-did-ye-call-it, for all of his roguery, was the finest painter that was ever known; and, adzooks, he thought there must be some mistake about his being a tory and a Gilbert.'