difference. Poor Dick went down on his knees,
and cried, and kissed his cousin’s hands, and
besought her to listen to him. And Amy
fainted. She fainted a second time at the
altar when Dick forced himself into her
presence and forbade the marriage. He was
so frantic, so out of himself, that he had to
be removed by compulsory measures before
the service could go on. Of course, after a
scene like this, his uncle’s family kept no
terms with him; he was forbidden ever to
suffer his shadow to darken their door
again—and so the poor, wild, crazed fellow
went headlong to destruction. I doubt very
much myself whether Amy was worth such
a sacrifice; but he thought so. Life, he said,
was unendurable without her, and he did
not care how soon he ended it.

But this was not all. Amy died of
consumption within a year of her marriage, and
Dick asserted that she had been killed by bad
usage. He went down to his uncle’s house where
she lay, and asked to see her. The request
was refused, and he forced his way by the
window into the room at night, as was
afterwards discovered by the disarrangement of
the furniture, and stayed there crying over
his dead love until dawn. At her funeral he
joined the mourners, and showed more grief
than any of them; but as the husband was
turning away, he walked up to him and shook
his clenched fist in his face, crying:

“You killed her, you straight-haired dog!”

It was supposed that if he had not been
restrained by the bystanders, he might have
done him a mischief. His family gave it out
that he was mad. Perhaps he was.

Dice, drinking, and horse-racing now soon
made an end of poor Dick’s five thousand
pounds. He lost every shred of self-respect,
and herded with the lowest of the low. There
is no telling how a man’s troubles may turn
him—love-disappointments especially; poor
Dick’s turned him into a thorough scamp.
He was a disgrace to the family, and a misery
to himself, but there was this good left in
him amidst his degrading excesses—the
capability of regretting. He never enjoyed his
vices or ceased to feel the horrible debasement
of them. He was seen at races, prize-
fights, and fairs, in rags and tatters; he was
known to have wanted bread, he was
suspected of theft and poaching, and his brother
Tom rescued him once out of the streets,
where he was singing songs disguised as a
lame soldier. Tom allowed him a guinea a
week, but before he had been in receipt of it
a month he made the annuity over to an
acquaintance for ten pounds, to take him to
Doncaster, and this friend always went with
him to receive the money, lest he should lose
it, so that Dick suffered extremities while he
was supposed to be at least fed and clothed
by his family. Ten years of reckless
debauchery and poignant misery reduced him
to the state in which his uncle Tarrant
brought him to me; his aunt Julia who had
brought Tom up offered to give him money
if he would go out of the country and never
come back again. How he went out of it, I
have told already.

When he ceased speaking, I said to
encourage him:

“You’ll do well yet, Dick, if you keep
steady, and we make land or are picked up.”

“What can it be,” said Dick, without

particularly answering, “that brings all these
old things over my mind? There’s a
child’s hymn I and Tom used to say at my
mother’s knee when we were little ones keeps
running through my thoughts. It’s the stars,
maybe; there was a little window by my bed
that I used to watch them at—a window in
my room at home in Cheshire—and if I was
ever afraid, as boys will be after reading a
good ghost story, I would keep on saying it
till I fell asleep.”

“That was a good mother of yours, Dick;
could you say that hymn now, do you think?
Some of us might like to hear it.”

“It’s as clear in my mind at this minute
as if my mother was here listening to me,”
said Dick, and he repeated:

“Hear my prayer, O! Heavenly Father,
Ere I lay me down to sleep;
Bid thy Angels, pure and holy,
Round my bed their vigil keep.

“My sins are heavy, but Thy mercy
Far outweighs them every one;
Down before Thy Cross I cast them,
Trusting in Thy help alone.

“Keep me through this night of peril
Underneath its boundless shade;
Take me to Thy rest, I pray Thee,
When my pilgrimage is made.

“None shall measure out Thy patience
By the span of human thought;
None shall bound the tender mercies
Which Thy Holy Son has bought.

“Pardon all my past transgressions,
Give me strength for days to come;
Guide and guard me with Thy blessing
Till Thy Angels bid me home.”

After awhile Dick drew his coat up over
his head and lay down to sleep.

“Well, poor Dick!” thought I, “it is surely
a blessed thing for you that—

“None shall measure out God’s patience,
By the span of human thought;
None shall bound the tender mercies
Which His Holy Son has bought.”

[THE BEGUILEMENT IN THE BOATS. THE SUPERCARGO'S STORY]

A quiet middle-aged gentleman passenger,
in the Long-boat, who was going to
establish a Store out there, and had been our
supercargo besides, told what follows.

She lay off Naarden—the good ship
Brocken Spectre, I mean—far out in the
roads; and I often thought, as I looked at
her through the haze, what an ancient, ill-
favoured hulk it was. I suppose I came
down some three or four times that day,
being in a lounging unsatisfied state of mind;