After living, as he best could, for about forty years, the painter took to himself a wife. No woman should ever have thought of marriage in connexion with such a person as Morrison, nor should Morrison have ever thought of marriage in connexion with such a person as himself. But so it was--for ladies are proverbially courageous in such matters, and Morrison could bid as dauntlessly for a wife as for a pianoforte--that he determined on marrying, and succeeded in finding a woman bold enough to accept of him for her husband. She was a rather respectable sort of person, who had lived for many years as housekeeper in a gentleman’s family, and had saved some money. They took lodgings in the neighbouring town; Morrison showed as much spirit, and got as often drunk as before; and in little more than a twelvemonth they came to be in want. They lingered on, however, in miserable poverty for a few months longer, and then quitted the place, leaving behind them all Mrs. Morrison’s well-saved wardrobe under arrestment for debt. The large trunk which contained it lay unopened till about five years after the poor woman had been laid in her grave, the victim of her miserable marriage; and the contents formed a strange comment on her history. _There_ were fine silk gowns, sadly marred by mildew, and richly flowered petticoats eaten by the moths. _There_, too, were there pretty little heads of the virgin and the apostles, and beads and a crucifix of some value; the loss of which, as the poor owner had been a zealous Roman Catholic, had affected her more than the loss of all the rest. And there, also, like the Babylonish garment among the goods of Achan, there was a packet of Morrison’s letters, full of flames and darts, and all those little commonplaces of love which are used by men clever on a small scale, who think highly of their own parts, and have no true affection for any one but themselves.