embarrassed; and, as he is a perfect gentleman, and not half your age, I have no doubt we shall be very happy together.

"I have taken the plate with me, which I consider to be my own, being exchanged, as you well know it was, for what I brought you at our marriage; and as I conclude you would hardly expect me to leave you without sixpence in my pocket, I have taken the trifle of notes and gold that were in the secret drawer. And so leaving you to your own conscience for your base, monstrous ingratitude, and hoping I shall never see your face again, I subscribe myself,

"LAURA PENGUIN."

Mrs. Penguin, at the time of her marriage, possessed half a dozen silver tea-spoons, and a pair of sugar-tongs, which the silversmith, when Penguin purchased two or three hundred pounds worth of new plate, took, and allowed for by weight, deducting the trifling amount from his bill. This the lady, by a beneficial calculation of her own, called an exchange, and had accordingly stripped Grotto-house, when she left it, of every silver article it contained.

Penguin's amazement at reading this letter was so extreme, that it was some time before it could find vent in the exclamation of "What a developement of character! I thought, when I made this will, that I should draw her out finely -did it on purpose-suspected she would get a peep at it, but never dreamt it would bring my marriage to such a comfortable conclusion." Upon this occasion the customary additaments of "exemplary, admirable woman! truly attached wife !" &c. &c. were suppressed; though, indeed, there was no time for their utterance, the delighted geologist beginning immediately to snap his fingers, prance up and down the room, and whistle loudly and lustily at the thought of his being so cheaply freed from one who, having always been a domestic tyrant, although a specious and hypocritical one, had now proved herself in addition to be a loose and unprincipled wanton. His own mercantile experience had convinced him that it was sometimes advantageous to gain a loss, a dictum which he considered to have been never more forcibly illustrated than in the welcome deprivation he

had now sustained; so far, therefore, from attempting to pursue the frail fugitive, he gave strict orders to the servants, should she again present herself at the gate, to deny her ad

mission.

CHAPTER VIII.

Alas! no, he's in heaven! where am I now?

Yonder's the sea, and there's a ship; how 't tumbles! And there's a rock lies watching under water,

Now, now it beats upon it, now, now, now,

There's a leak sprung, a sound one-how they cry!
Up with her 'fore the wind, you'll lose all else!
Good night, good night-you're gone!

THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN.

It was on the evening after this occurrence, that a stranger, arriving from London on the outside of the coach, got down at the Cricketers public-house, at the entrance of Thaxted, made his way into the tap-room, and called in an asthmatic, wheezing voice, for a rummer of hot brandy and water. Of low stature, and considerably past the meridian of life, his blue sailor trowsers, his coat and waistcoat of shabby black,

and his dirty white neckcloth, rendered it somewhat difficult to divine his calling; while his features, like his garments, were at once weatherbeaten and indefinite. Their sunburnt patches indicated long residence in some southern clime, in spite of which superficial bronze upon the prominent parts of his face, there was elsewhere a blotchy and sodden ghastliness that betokened a constitution broken down by confirmed habits of intemperance. His loose flesh and his shrunken limbs showed that he had fallen away from a former state of robustness. Beneath his low brow, overhung by a shock of short bushy hair, were two deep-set grey eyes, so closely placed together as to resemble those of a fourfooted animal, though they appeared to be fixed and dimmed by habitual sottishness. Sullenness and craft constituted his predominant expression, and yet the man seemed to be convivial in his habits, and even in his nature, drinking deeply, talking as freely as his husky voice would allow him, and not seldom indulging in a laugh, rendered peculiarly hideous by the ugliness of his mouth, and the ragged discoloured appearance of his few remaining teeth.