After another painful interview with the prisoner, Clynchiere returned to Elleringay. A settled, cheerless, undissipating gloom darkened the mind of the deluded and now ruined old man. His sensibilities seemed so stunned that he sympathized little with his sorrowing child, and when the heart-riven Letitia conversed with or sought sympathy from her father, her blood ran colder to observe how obtuse and heedless he had so suddenly become. Poor Gideon! with a mind so little qualified to bear up against such blasting misfortunes, he had, it is to be feared, irretrievably sunk beneath the crushing effects of his redoubled calamities.

In due course of time the prisoner was placed at the bar. The trial did not last long, and terminated in his complete acquittal. It was incontestably shown that Count Puffendoff was the guilty individual. On several occasions had Inglis lent his name to the Count in bill transactions, and in the present instance he had, through that tact and finesse which were such predominating features of the Count's character, pre

VOL. III.

K

vailed upon Inglis, in a hurry, to sign a blank paper for five hundred pounds, under the implicit promise of filling it up at his leisure. Inglis having such a profound opinion of his titled friend, without a thought, complied, and he even never looked at the price of the stamp. Puffendoff had obtained a stamp for a thousand pounds, and in filling up the document wrote the name of a wealthy merchant instead of his own. He got it discounted by a usurer, and in the progress of time the fraud was detected.

The prisoner's counsel defended him with surprising eloquence, and the entire court evinced sympathy for one who had been so duped and assoiled. The judge, in summing up, however, descanted at length on the villany so frequently perpetrated under the guise of gentility, and the cloak of title. He observed that this transaction ought to stand out in bold relief as a profitable lesson to all persons like the prisoner, and warn them against the formation of acquaintance so specious and deceptive. And he concluded by the expression of a fervent

hope that the perpetrator of so base a crime would be brought to justice, and smart under the worthy punishment of violated right and infracted law.

The prisoner, as observed, was acquitted, and the world was before him; but the world wore another aspect, and he saw in prospective remorse and bitterness, beggary and scorn! Well, indeed, might he tremble on being informed of two strangers arriving at the Manor-House-it was no fear inspired by reflection on the crime for which he was unjustly arraigned-it was the consciencesmiting truth that he and his were irretrievably brought to poverty. 'Twas this that made him feverish, restless-'twas this which constituted the demon misery of his breast. Alas! how severe the penalty of so much vanity, wrong-headedness, wrong-hearted

ness

Puffendoff knew the signs of the times. A ruddy west presaged a tempest on the morrow, and he adroitly saved himself from the storm. He, as the reader already knows, crossed the channel laden with the proceeds

of his villany. Lord Squanderfield, in all the brazen impudence of his nature, was a man on town as before; the transaction at the club he mildly termed a "slight misunderstanding at cards," and when his quondam friend, Jemmy Jingles, figured off in the calendar at the Old Bailey, his memory became strangely treacherous, and he declared he knew little or nothing pertaining to the accused. To be sure he had heard of or seen him at the club, and he volunteered his opinion again and again that the committee ought to institute more circumspect rules, and guard against the future admission of obscure citizens and nonentities, and those of whose character they knew nothing distingué or recommendatory!

The afternoon on which Mr. Shears went to the rectory, for the special purpose of carrying information relative to the strange occurrence which had taken place at the Hall; to wit, the apprehension, iron fettering, and actual bearing away of Mr. Inglis, it so chanced that the divine was indulging in his innocent recreation, viz: hunting the

beasts of the field. The housekeeper, however, happened to have a decided penchant for every description of news and tittle-tattle, nor did anything give her more consummate pleasure than to hear of the downfall of those London folks, who, ever since their arrival, had held, in her opinion, an august and exalted front, so much so as to generate in the breast of this individual a feeling, which might be described as nothing less than an implacable hatred. She issued orders to one of the serving maids to bring from the cellar a pitcher of old October, and insisted on Mr. Shears' heartily regaling himself—and which it is but due to that gentleman's urbanity to add, that he graciously complied with this very reasonable request.

The shadows of night were waxing darker and darker, and each distant object becoming more and more indistinct, ere the well-known foot of Boniface resounded on the hard pavement which conducted to the stable-yard. They had had what the divine called a glorious run, and a splendid kill, full seventeen miles from home, and as he was thus,