habits of long-established intimacy with my late father. I was
willing accurately to discover the state of mind of those who had been
witnesses of this scene, and who had had some previous opportunity of
observing my character and manners. I, therefore, endeavoured to open a
conversation with him. "Well, my good Thomas," said I, in a querulous
tone, and with a hesitating manner, "am I not a most miserable
creature?"

"Do not speak to me, Master Williams! You have given me a shock that I
shall not get the better of for one while. You were hatched by a hen, as
the saying is, but you came of the spawn of a cockatrice. I am glad to
my heart that honest farmer Williams is dead; your villainy would else
have made him curse the day that ever he was born."

"Thomas, I am innocent' I swear by the great God that shall judge me
another day, I am innocent!"

"Pray, do not swear! for goodness' sake, do not swear! your poor soul is
damned enough without that. For your sake, lad, I will never take any
body's word, nor trust to appearances, tho' it should be an angel. Lord
bless us! how smoothly you palavered it over, for all the world, as if
you had been as fair as a new-born babe! But it will not do; you will
never be able to persuade people that black is white. For my own part, I
have done with you. I loved you yesterday, all one as if you had been my
own brother. To-day I love you so well, that I would go ten miles with
all the pleasure in life to see you hanged."

"Good God, Thomas! have you the heart? What a change! I call God to
witness, I have done nothing to deserve it! What a world do we live in!"

"Hold your tongue, boy! It makes my very heart sick to hear you! I
would not lie a night under the same roof with you for all the world! I
should expect the house to fall and crush such wickedness! I admire that
the earth does not open and swallow you alive! It is poison so much as
to look at you! If you go on at this hardened rate, I believe from my
soul that the people you talk to will tear you to pieces, and you will
never live to come to the gallows. Oh, yes, you do well to pity
yourself; poor tender thing! that spit venom all round you like a toad,
and leave the very ground upon which you crawl infected with your
slime."

Finding the person with whom I talked thus impenetrable to all I could
say, and considering that the advantage to be gained was small, even if
I could overcome his prepossession, I took his advice, and