mised was, that, in any extremity, he would apply to Farmer rather than to another per

son.

"You had best, I can tell you," rejoined the old lawyer, shaking his hand cordially at parting, "or, by Jupiter! I will write a begging-letter in your name to old Adam Wraysbury, and humble your false pride in the dust."

CHAPTER IV.

THE elation derived by the solitary barrister from this renewal of friendship with a man he esteemed so highly, was of short continuance. To the utter injury of his professional duties, he was shortly afterwards summoned to Ramsgate. The united fortitude of Mrs. Woolston and her sister was not equal to a domestic calamity, to which the sickliness of the little boy assigned peculiar importance. Both children were dangerously ill of scarlet fever; and Sophia feared that their mother also was sickening.

Poor Woolston started directly; and in the

course of what was then a long journey, deeply regretted that he had not profited by Farmer's liberal offers of pecuniary aid. He would gladly have procured London advice for those darling children. The report of their condition made by the Ramsgate doctor was alarming, and malignant scarlet fever was just then fatally prevalent. His conscience felt rebuked for having assigned undue importance to money-cares that could only endure for a day: whereas the loss of either of the three so dear to him, would be a calamity indeed. He had not, till that moment, understood the force of his family affections. But the mists arising out of business-life and worldly interests, cleared off in a moment. the thought of their danger, Harrals and the Court of Chancery became non-existent. earth seemed to contain only three human forms -three loving human beings bearing his name.

At

The

It was, dusk when he reached Ramsgate ;— dusk even in spite of that clearer atmosphere affording, by comparison with his murky court

in the Temple, a second day. But in his heart, was the shadow of night. When he proposed to walk to his lodgings from the inn where the coach stopped, on pretence of stretching his limbs, but in reality to delay his knowledge of the worst, the very ostler perceived him to be so incapable of the effort, that he placed the

gentleman and his baggage," almost peremptorily, in a fly; and dispatched them to their address.

John Woolston's presentiments had not deceived him. The boy was dead !—But the mother and her little daughter were in the utmost danger; which deadened or suspended the effect of the sad event. Dear Maria-the loving wife

-the tender mother-parched with fever, gasping for breath, unconscious of all that was passing around her, had a stronger claim upon his tears than the little marble figure extended white and motionless on the mattrass of its cot.

After the manner of his sex, John Woolston's first impulse on recovering his self-possession,

was to find fault. Poor Sophy Pennington, half stupefied by sorrow and terror, was severely called to account for not having sooner summoned him from town; though, till the eruption made its appearance the preceding night, neither of the medical men in attendance had surmised the fearful nature of the sore throat, of which the two children had been complaining. But, -also after the manner of his sex, he gave up all for lost, even now that the doctors, aware of the character of the malady, were better able to oppose their skill to its ravages. Even when, the following afternoon, they asserted that Mrs. Woolston's fever was abating, and the bad symptoms of little Netta diminished, he remained hopelessly convinced that a single grave was about to engulph all that was dear to him on earth.

Poor soft-hearted, and not very hard-headed, Sophy Pennington, was wiser. Though, when informed that her sister was on the road to recovery, she gave free vent to the tears, which, at the worst, she had been incapable of shed