respectful manner. Cease your wonderment ; Captain Hartley and Ned Swiftfoot are one and the same person.""

"Great heaven preserve us!" exclaimed aunt Deborah. "Great heaven preserve us!" repeated she, shaking her powdered curls. "It cannot be true what I hear. I'm dreaming-it must be a dream!"

"I wish it was not one of stern and cruel reality," replied Charles.

"Do not digress," said Blanch, nearly choked with emotion. "What followed ?"

"Mr Wells stood gazing at the speaker," continued Charles, "as if bereft of every sense. He turned from one to the other, and then mechanically re-occupied his chair without uttering a word.

"Pardon me, sir,' observed the prisoner, 'for the imposition that I have practised, and extend your kindness in pleading forgiveness for me from your injured I

VOL. II.

F

might add,' said he, passionately, 'outraged

daughter.'

Outraged, indeed!"

exclaimed aunt

Deborah, applying her handkerchief to her

eyes.

"Let us hear the remainder quickly," said Blanch, checking her impatience with difficulty.

"A silence ensued," continued the narrator, "and each one present seemed either unable to break it from amazement or unwillingness. At length the vicar turned to my father and observed, in a singularly collected voice, 'I wish you, Mr Merton, to commence the examination; I am not sufficiently composed to perform the duty.'

666

Certainly,' replied my father, keeping his eyes fixed on the prisoner, as if to penetrate some mystery which perplexed him.

"At this moment I saw the vicar shake

as with an ague fit. I hastened towards him, and as he was falling heavily from his chair I caught him in my arms."

"Poor old man!" sobbed Blanch.

heart was broken."

"His

"No, no," added aunt Deborah.

"Let

me not hear that."

"Hurrying from the room, resumed Charles, "I carried him to the breakfastparlour, where, from a from a state of seeming unconsciousness, violent delirium ensued. Both Grace and Ellen were present, and then that which followed baffles description."

'Did they learn at once the cause?" inquired Blanch.

"Yes," replied Charles. "His ravings were such as to preclude the possibility of all concealment. The fearful truth was proclaimed with less suddenness to them than to us."

"It must have maddened Grace," said

21437

Blanch, wringing her hands with mental anguish.

"I fear," returned Charles, in a whisper, "that it has."

Quickly follow me, aunt," added Blanch, hastening from the room, without waiting for a reply, and in less than a minute she was flying on her road to the vicarage.

CHAPTER VIII.

"This above all,-to thine own self be true."

"It's a remarkable circumstance," soliloquised the ratcatcher, as, in the evening shades, he bent his footsteps towards Kit Macrone's cottage, followed by his faithful terriers"a very remarkable circumstance," continued he; "but for anybody that knows Ned to suppose him guilty of murder, must be a right down nincompoop. He certainly has said, more than once, that he'd hash a constable to a moral rather than be nabbed; but as to killing a young, pretty woman !— pooh-pooh!-he'd as soon think of going to church."

Soaking Bob paused in his audible reflections, and then resumed.