"All is lost and discovered. I can but write you a very short account of the things that have been happening here, for I am under what these people call the surveillance of the police. I have got a few minutes, however, and I will pay the maid secretly to give this to the post. Never was such a time as I have had this morning. Four men have been here, and among them Atkinson, who lived just down below at the cottage with the gray shutters. He knew me in a minute, and told everybody who I was. But that is not the worst of it, for they have got a commissioner of police with him--a terrible looking man, who took as much snuff as Mr. Jenkins, the justice of peace. They had got all sorts of information in England about me, and you, and every body, and they came to me to give them more, and cross-questioned me in a terrible manner; and that ugly old Commissioner, in his black coat and great wig, took my keys, and opened all the drawers and places. What could I do to stop them? So they got all your letters to me; because I could not bear to burn my dear boy's letters, and that letter from old Sir John to my poor father, which I once showed you. So when they got all those, there was no use of trying to conceal it any more, and, besides, they might have sent me to the Bastile or the Tower of London. So every thing has come out, and the best thing you can do is to take whatever money you have got, or can get, and run away as fast as possible, and come over here and take me away. One of them was as fine a man as ever I saw, and quite a gentleman, though very severe. "Pray, my dear John, don't lose a moment's time, but run away before they catch you; for they know every thing now, depend upon it, and nothing will stop them from hanging you or sending you to the colonies that you can do; for they have got all the proofs, and I could see by their faces that they wanted nothing more; and if they do, my heart will be quite broken, that is, if they hang you or send you to the colonies, where you will have to work like a galley-slave, and a man standing over you with a whip, beating your bare back very likely. So run away, and come to your afflicted mother." She did not seem to have been quite sure what name to sign, for she first put "Brown," but then changed the word to "Hastings," and then again to "Ayliffe." There were two or three postscripts, but they were of no great importance, and John Ayliffe did not take the trouble of reading them. The terms he bestowed upon his mother--not in the secrecy of his heart, but aloud and fiercely--were any thing but filial, and his burst of rage lasted full five minutes before it was succeeded by the natural fear and trepidation which the intelligence he had received might well excite. Then, however, his terror became extreme. The color, usually high, and now heightened both by rage and wine, left his cheeks, and, as he read over some parts of his mother's letter again, he trembled violently.