Dorothy is that you?" exclaimed a matronly gentlewoman, hastening down stairs, and followed by a young lady of apparently some three or four and twenty. "Is it possible? Why, what's the matter?'

"Nothing at all, ma'am-nothing," said Dorothy, suddenly relapsing into her customary apathy; for sooth to say, she was a sort of vegetable woman; a drowsy, dreamy person, whose performance of such a scream was considered by its hearers as a most wondrous manifestation of power. Nobody, to have looked at Dorothy Vale, would have thought that within her dwelt such a scream in posse; but, sometimes, great is the mystery of little old women. "Nothing at all, ma'am-that is, don't be frightened —that is, they say, ma'am, murder and robbery.'

"Heavens ! Where-where?" exclaimed the young lady.

"It isn't your dear husband, ma'am-oh no, it isn't master, so don't be frightened," said the tranquil Dorothy. "But if you please, ma'am, it's in that room-I mean the body, ma'am."

The young lady, for a moment, shrank back in terror; and then, as though reproving herself for the weakness, she rapidly passed into the room, followed by her elder companion. At the same instant, the wounded man had half-risen from the couch, and was looking wanderingly around him-" Clarissa! Can it be?".

he cried, and again swooning, fell back. Instantly, the girl was on her knees at his side; unconscious of the reproving, the astonished looks of the matron.

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"He's dying-oh, Mrs. Wilton he is dying! Murdered-I know it all-I see it all-and for me-wretch that I am- -for me," and her form writhed with anguish, and she burst into an agony of tears. "Oh no-the hurt is not mortal; be assured, I am surgeon enough to know that; be assured of it, Mrs. Snipeton;" thus spoke Mrs. Wilton in words of coldest comfort, and with a manner strangely frozen. "Dorothy, stay you with your mistress, whilst I send for assistance, and seek what remedies I can myself. will return instantly: meanwhile, I say, remain with your mistress." And St. James, unconscious of the hospitality, was the guest of Mr. Ebenezer Snipeton-whose character, the reader may remember, was somewhat abruptly discussed by the stranger horseman in the past chapter. It was here, at Dovesnest, that the thrifty money-seller kept his young wife close-far away, and safe, as he thought, from the bold compliments, the reckless gallantry of the rich young men who, in their frequent time of need, paid visits

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to the friend who, the security certain as the hour, never failed to assist them. Mr. Snipeton was not, in the ordinary matters of life, a man who underrated his own advantages, moral and physical. Sooth to say, he was, at times, not unapt to set what detraction might have thought an interested value on them. And yet, what a touchstone for true humility in man, is woman! Ebenezer Snipeton, in all worldly dealings, held himself a match for any of the money-coining sons of Adam. He could fence with a guinea—and sure we are guinea-fencing is a far more delicate art; is an exercise demanding a finer touch, a readier sleight, than the mere twisting of steel foils;-he could fence, nay, with even the smallest current coin of the realm, and-no matter who stood against him-come off conqueror. Gold," says Shelley, "is the old man's sword." And most wickedly at times, will hoarybearded men, with blood as cold and thin as water in their veins, hack and slash with it! They know the grim, palsied warriors! how the weapon will cut heart-strings; they know what wounds it will inflict; but then, the wounds bleed inwardly there is no outward and visible hurt to call for the coroner; and so the victim may die, and show, as gossips have it, a very handsome corpse, whilst homicidal avarice with no drop of outward gore upon his hands no damning spots seen by the world's naked eye-mixes in the world, a very respectable old gentleman; a man who has a file of receipts to show for everything; a man who never did owe a shilling; and above all, a man who takes all the good he gets as nothing more than a proper payment for his exceeding respectability. He is a pattern man; and for such men heaven rains manna; only in these days the shower comes down in gold.

Ebenezer Snipeton, we say, had a high and therefore marketable opinion of himself; for the larger the man's self-esteem the surer is he of putting it off in the world's mart. The small dealer in conceit may wait from the opening to the closing of the market, and not a soul shall carry away his little penniworth : now the large holder is certain of a quick demand for all his stock. Men are taken by its extent, and close with him immediately. If, reader, you wanted to buy one single egg, would you purchase that one egg of the poor, rascal dealer, who had only one egg to sell? Answer us, truly. Behold the modest tradesman. He stands shrinkingly, with one leg drawn up, and his ten fingers. interlaced lackadaisically, the while his soul, in its more than maiden bashfulness, would retreat, get away, escape anyhow from

its consciousness. And so he stands, all but hopeless behind his one egg. He feels a blush crawl over his face-for there are blushes that do crawl-as you pass by him, for pass him you do. It is true you want but one egg; nevertheless, to bring only one egg to market shows a misery, a meanness in the man, that in the generous heat of your heart's-blood, you most manfully despise. And, therefore, you straddle on to the tradesman who stands behind a little mountain of eggs; and timidly asking for one-it is so very poor, so wretched a bit of huckstering, you are ashamed to be seen at it-you take the first egg offered you, and humbly laying down your halfpenny farthing, vanish straight away! As it is with eggs, so in the world-market, is it with human pretensions. The man with a small, single conceit is shunned, a silly,. miserable fellow; but the brave, wholesale-dealer-the man of a thousand pretensions, is beset by buyers. Now, Ebenezer was one of your merchants of ten thousand eggs-and though to others they had proved addled, they had nevertheless been gold to him. And yet, did Ebenezer's wife-his ripe, red-lipped spouse of twoand-twenty-somehow touch her husband with a strange, a painful humility. He had sixty iron winters-and every one of them plain as an iron bar-in his face. Time had used his visage as Robinson Crusoe used his wooden calendar, notching every day in it. And what was worse, though Time had kept an honest account --and what, indeed, so honest, so terribly honest as Time?-nevertheless, he had so marked the countenance-it is a shabby, shameless trick Time has with some faces,-that every mark to the thoughtless eye counted well-nigh double. And Snipeton knew this. He knew, too, that upon his nose-half-way, like sentinel on the middle of a bridge-there was a wart very much bigger than a pea, with bristles, sticking like black pins in it. Now, this wart Ebenezer in his bachelor days had thought of like a philosopher; that is, he had never thought about it. Nay, his honeymoon had almost waned into the cold, real moon that was ever after to blink upon his marriage life, ere Ebenezer thought of his wrinkled, pouch-like cheeks; of his more terrible wart. And then did every bristle burn in it, as though it was turned to red hot wire: then was he plagued, tormented by the thought of the wart, as by some avenging imp. He seemed to have become all wart : to be one unsightly excrescence. The pauper world envied the happiness of Ebenezer Snipeton-with such wealth, with such a wife, oh, what a blessed man! But the world knew not the tor