He felt that, after the example which he had just had of the diabolical cunning of the man with whom he had been contesting, it would be worse than useless for him to hope to be of any help to Mary Horneck. He had already wasted more than a week of valuable time. He could, at least, prevent any more being wasted by going to Mary and telling her how great a mistake she had made in being over-generous to him. She should never have made such a friend of him. Dr. Johnson had been right when he said that he, Oliver Goldsmith, had taken advantage of the gracious generosity of the girl and her family. He felt that it was his vanity that had led him to undertake on Mary's behalf a task for which he was utterly unsuited; and only the smallest consolation was allowed to him in the reflection that his awakening had come before it was too late. He had not been led away to confess to Mary all that was in his heart. She had been saved the unhappiness which that confession would bring to a nature so full of feeling as hers. And he had been saved the mortification of the thought that he had caused her pain. The dawn was embroidering with its floss the early foliage of the trees of the Temple before he went to his bed-room, and another hour had passed before he fell asleep. He did not awake until the clock had chimed the hour of ten, and he found that his man had already brought to the table at his bedside the letters which had come for him in the morning. He turned them over with but a languid amount of interest. There was a letter from Griffiths, the bookseller; another from Garrick, relative to the play which Goldsmith had promised him; a third, a fourth and a fifth were from men who begged the loan of varying sums for varying periods. The sixth was apparently, from its shape and bulk, a manuscript--one of the many which were submitted to him by men who called him their brother-poet. He turned it over, and perceived that it had not come through the post. That fact convinced him that it was a manuscript, most probably an epic poem, or perhaps a tragedy in verse, which the writer might think he could get accepted at Drury Lane by reason of his friendship with Garrick. He let this parcel lie on the table until he had dressed, and only when at the point of sitting down to breakfast did he break the seals. The instant he had done so he gave a cry of surprise, for he found that the parcel contained a number of letters addressed in Mary Horneck's handwriting to a certain Captain Jackson at a house in the Devonshire village where she had been staying the previous summer. On the topmost letter there was a scrap of paper, bearing a scrawl from Mrs. Abing ton--the spelling as well as the writing was hers-- “'Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.' These are a few feathers pluckt from our hawke, hoping that they will be a feather in the capp of dear Dr. Goldsmith.” CHAPTER XXVI.