a close. During my imprisonment my wife died--died, not by my
hands, but from the work of them! She was laid in a strange grave, and
strangers laid her head in the dust, while I lay a prisoner in the city
where she was buried. My boy--my poor Willie--who had been always
neglected, was left without father and without mother! Sir! sir! my boy
was left without food! He forsook visiting me in the prison; I heard he
had turned the associate of thieves; and from that period five years
have passed, and I have obtained no trace of him. But it is my doing--my
poor Willie!"

Here the victim of procrastination finished his narrative. The storm had
passed away, and the sun again shone out. The man had interested me, and
we left the gardens together. I mentioned that I had to go into the
city; he said he had business there also, and asked to accompany me. I
could not refuse him. From the door by which we left the gardens, our
route lay by way of Oxford Street. As we proceeded down Holborn, the
church bell of St. Sepulchre's began to toll; and the crowd, collected
round the top of Newgate Street, indicated an execution. As we
approached the place, the criminal was brought forth. He was a young man
about nineteen years of age, and had been found guilty of an aggravated
case of housebreaking. As the unhappy being turned round to look upon
the spectators, my companion gave a convulsive shriek, and, springing
from my side, exclaimed, "Righteous Heaven! my Willie! my murdered
Willie!" He had proceeded but a few paces, when he fell with his face
upon the ground. In the wretched criminal he discovered his lost, his
only son. The miserable old man was conveyed, in a state of
insensibility, to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, where I visited him the
next day: he seemed to suffer much, and in a few hours he died with a
shudder, and the word _procrastination_ on his tongue.

THE TEN OF DIAMONDS.

At length I reached the Moated Grange, on a visit to my friend Graeme.
But since I am to speak a good deal of this place, I may as well explain
that it was misnamed. There was no moat, nor had there been for a
hundred years; but round the old pile--hoary, and shrivelled, and
palsied enough, in all conscience, for delighting the mole-eye of any
antiquarian hunks--- there was a visible trace of the old ditch in a
hollow covered with green sward going all round the house, which hollow
was the only place clear of trees. And these trees! They stood fo