At such a check as this to my enthusiastic sympathy, I sat in silence for a time, and looked at him. His elbows were on his knees, his face was pale, his hair in disorder, and his eyes were fixed on the wall opposite with a vacant and abstracted stare. There was a haggard look about his handsome face, and a careworn expression on his broad brow, which excited within me the deepest sympathy and sadness. Something had happened--something of no common kind. This was a something which was far, very far, more serious than those old troubles which had oppressed him. This was something far different from those old perplexities--the entanglements with three engagements. Amid all those he was nothing but a big, blundering baby; but now he seemed like a sorrow-stricken man. Where was the light of his eyes, the glory of his brow, the music of his voice? Where was that glow that once used to pervade his fresh, open, sunny face? Where! It was Jack--but not the Jack of old. It was Jack--but "Alas! how changed from him That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim!" Or, as another poet has it-- '"Twas Jack--but living Jack no more!" "Jack," said I, after a long and solemn silence, in which I had tried in vain to conjecture what might possibly be the cause of this--"Jack, dear boy, you and I have had confidences together, a little out of the ordinary line. I came here to congratulate you about your fortune; but I find you utterly cut up about something. Will you let me ask you what it is? I don't ask out of idle curiosity, but out of sympathy. At the same time, if it's any thing of a private nature, I beg pardon for asking you to tell it." Jack looked up, and a faint flicker of a smile passed over his face. "Oh, all right, old boy!" he said. "I'm hit hard--all up--and that sort of thing--hit hard--yes, damned hard--serves me right, too, you know, for being such an infernal fool." He frowned, and drew a long breath. "Wait a minute, old chap," said he, rising from the sofa; "I'll get something to sustain nature, and then I'll answer your question. I'm glad you've come. I don't know but that it'll do me good to tell it all to somebody. It's hard to stay here in my den, fretting my heart out --damned hard!--but wait a minute, and I'll explain." Saying this, he walked over to the sideboard. "Will you take any thing?" "Thanks, no," said I; "a pipe is all I want." And I proceeded to fill and light one. Thereupon Jack poured out a tumbler of raw brandy, which he swallowed. Then he came back to the sofa. A flush came to his face, and his eyes looked brighter; but he had still the same haggard aspect. "I'm in for it, Macrorie," said he at last, gloomily. "In for it?" "Yes--an infernal scrape." "What?" "The widow--damn her!" and he struck his clinched fist against the head of the sofa. "In for it? The widow?" I repeated. "What do you mean?"