"I deserve your censure," returned George; "but surely there is nothing so heinous in what I have done as to merit the epithet you apply to me. I acknowledge and am ashamed of my folly; what can I do more? And I have also suffered for it." "Ye acknowledge your folly!" exclaimed the fisherman; "pray, sir, how could ye deny it? I saw it--the whole toun saw it--my poor daughter was a witness o' it; and yet ye have the impudence to stand there before me and say ye acknowledge it! And muckle mends it makes to say ye are sorry for it! I suppose, sir, the very murderer is sorry for his crime, when he stands condemned before the judge; but his sorrow, I reckon, is but a poor reason why he should be pardoned. Away wi' ye, I say--ye shall find no admission here. At ony rate, I have taken good care to have my silly bairn out o' your reach, and that she may be out o' the way o' the disgrace and the scandal that ye have brought upon us." So saying, the speaker rudely closed the door in the face of his visiter. George Mordington returned to his mother's house, gliding silently, as a ghost is said to move; for his cheek burned lest any one should look upon his face. On the following day, he prepared to set out for Gateshead; but before he went he placed the following letter, addressed to Marion Weatherly, into the hands of his sister, and which she was to give to her on her return:-- "MARION,--I cannot now call you _my_ Marion--I have disgraced you, I have dishonoured myself. Your advice, which I deemed unnecessary, was not only forgotten, but you know how it was insulted. I know you must despise me; and I blame you not--you have a right to do so. I have made myself contemptible in your eyes, but not more contemptible than my conduct has rendered me in my own. I blush to think of you, and your excellence renders my folly more despicable. Call it madness--call it what you will--for it was the infatuation, the frenzy, the insanity of an hour. Yet, dear Marion, by all the hours and scenes of happiness that are gone, by all that we have known together, and that we might yet know, cast me not off for ever! Had I been familiar with the nightly debauch, my degradation would have been less, my conduct not so extravagant. Think of me as one degraded by folly, but not abandoned to it. I have sinned, and that deeply; but my repentance is as bitter as my crime was ridiculous. Its remembrance chokes me. _Forgive me, Marion._ I write the words, but I could not utter them, for I find that I could not stand in your presence, and support the weight of the debasement which presses upon me as a galling load. Your father has treated me cruelly--I would say that he has insulted me, if it were possible to insult one who has so insulted himself. The only apology I can, or should, offer for the part I have acted