"You give me greater credit than I deserve, Geoffrey: my imprudent conduct merited a severe punishment, and I had sense enough to discern that it was just. After the first shock was over, I felt happier in my poverty than I had ever done during my unmerited prosperity. I had abused the gifts of fortune while they were mine, and I determined to acquire an independence by my own exertions. A friend, whom I had scarcely regarded as such, during my reckless career of folly, came unexpectedly to my assistance, and offered to purchase for me a commission in the army, but I had private reasons for wishing to obtain a situation in this office. Writing a good hand, and having been originally educated for the profession, together with the recommendation of Mr. Bassett who was related to my friend, procured me the place I now hold." "And your reasons for coming here?" I cried, burning with curiosity. "Pardon me, Geoffrey. That is my secret." He spoke with the calmness of a philosopher, but I saw his emotion, as his eyes turned mechanically to the parchment he was copying, and affected an air of cheerful resignation. The candid exposure of his past faults and follies raised, rather than sunk him in my estimation; but I was sadly disappointed at the general terms in which they were revealed. I wanted to know every event of his private life, and this abridgment was very tantalizing. While I was pondering these things in my heart, the pen he had grasped so tightly was flung to some distance, and he raised his fine eyes to my face. "Thank God! Geoffrey; I have not as yet lost the faculty of feeling--that I can see and deplore the errors of the past. When I think what I was, what I am, and what I might have been, it brings a cloud over my mind which often dissolves in tears. This is the weakness of human nature. But the years so uselessly wasted rise up in dread array against me, and the flood-gates of the soul are broken up by bitter and remorseful regrets. But see," he exclaimed, dashing the thickening mist from his eyes, and resuming his peculiarly benevolent smile: "the dark cloud has passed, and George is himself again." "You are happier than I. You can smile through your tears," I cried, regarding his April face with surprise. "And so would you, Geoffrey, if, like me, you had brought your passions under the subjection of reason." "It is no easy task, George, to storm a city, when your own subjects defend the walls, and at every attack drive you back with your own weapons, into the trenches. I will, however, commence the attack, by striving to forget that there is a world beyond these gloomy walls, in whose busy scenes I am forbidden to mingle." "Valiantly resolved, Geoffrey. But how comes it, that you did not tell me the news this morning?" "News--what news?" "Your cousin Theophilus returned last night." "The devil he did! That's everything but good news to me. But are you sure the news is true?"