another, and take himself off again to the Indies? So much for the husband, and now for the lover, as he called himself. 'Matters, I don't know what, took him to France; and he was to return to her, who was weary of her life in his absence, within a month. He had not been gone a fortnight, before she received a letter from him, written in a French prison, where he was confined for debt. That hour she started post for Dover, and in three days they were on their road home together. Little Harri had released the man she adored, and brought him away from his troubles in triumph and in joy.' David's handkerchief, notwithstanding the depth into which it had been plunged, and the compactness with which it had been doubled up, was out of his pocket, unfolded, and across his knees in an instant; while the dame took occasion to fortify herself for the coming trial with a considerable pinch of Scotch snuff. 'They didn't reach home, Sir,' resumed she, 'for more than a fortnight; for they staid a day here, and a day there, to see the sights, and such like; and because she, poor girl, was in no condition for much hurry, though she had forgotten that, as she did every thing, when she started, but her devoted love for him whom she went to rescue. But when they did arrive, dearly did she pay for the fault a husband's cruelty had driven her to commit; and bitter was the punishment of Providence. But it was all fate, I'm sure it was, it must have been; for surely her crime didn't call for such a dreadful judgment as befell her. Oh, good heart, Sir; after all she had undergone, in a long journey to a foreign land, where she had never been before, and all alone, too, Sir, without a friend to help or to advise her; she had left a house fitted and furnished like a little palace, as a body may say, the homestead of her high-priced fatal happiness; think of her reaching what she thought a home, and finding none! What can have been her feelings? She was soon to be a mother, and she had not a bed to lie down upon! In the short time that she had been away, the servant, in whose charge she left her house, by the aid and advice of a villain she kept company with, had carried off every thing, under the pretence that he was moving for her mistress. Ah, you may look surprised, Sir, and with reason; but 'tis just as true as you and I sit here.' 'God's will be done!' sobbed David; 'she's out of harm's way now, Bessum; God's will be done!'