Such were these orphan children, and in a world as we well know not famous for its charities. It will be taxing my reader’s patience--who is anxious I see to come to the end of my story--to trace their lives minutely through the two or three following years. Their lot was a hard one. Thrown out of a station to which their birth entitled them, the trials to which they were exposed had the same effect on them as it does upon every body else under similar circumstances, viz. made young Selden suspicious and fretful, soured his temper, and took from him even the little amiableness which the world had ever allowed was in his composition. While his sister, his too gentle sister, like the vine round the tree which supports it and moves with it as that is moved by the forest wind, so she changed with her brother though winning still, for in her any thing like harshness was softened down by a sweetness which nothing could destroy. What I am now about to lay before the reader, is one of those black passages in the catalogue of human suffering that may well make me shudder as I write, and if the facts are doubted as here laid down, my authority for them shall be given hereafter. Lyle Selden, despised and trampled on by the world, neglected and contemned by those that had abundant reasons for loving him, opposed by fortune in every shape, and seeing that all his best and most strenuous exertions to win his way availed not, but served only to heap up greater difficulties, committed a forgery, and that too under the signature of his guardian. That he was in a measure justified in taking some means to gain back the fortune stolen from him, may be admitted by all; but the law is not supposed to make any distinction in favor of such circumstances, and its dread sentence now hung over him, with nothing but the selfish griping hand of Saxelby to stay the blow. The event was not yet public, and here only was the last desperate hope of mercy. The agony of Luce’s mind at this dread climax of suffering, must be imagined, not written. Every means was thought of--every compromise was proffered--every suggestion that a tender and delicate girl almost maddened by the threatening evil could suggest, was resorted to, but they availed not. The hard hand of Saxelby could not yield--his ear could not catch the voice of mercy--his heart responded not to any cry--he must have justice.