was thin, to a degree that suggested the idea rather of
a skeleton than a person actually alive. Life seemed hardly to be the
capable inhabitant of so woe-begone and ghost-like a figure. The taper
of wholesome life was expired; but passion, and fierceness, and frenzy,
were able for the present to supply its place.

I was to the utmost degree astonished and shocked at the sight of
him.--He sternly commanded my conductors to leave the room.

"Well, sir, I have this day successfully exerted myself to save your
life from the gallows. A fortnight ago you did what you were able to
bring my life to that ignominious close.

"Were you so stupid and undistinguishing as not to know that the
preservation of your life was the uniform object of my exertions? Did
not I maintain you in prison? Did not I endeavour to prevent your being
sent thither? Could you mistake the bigoted and obstinate conduct of
Forester, in offering a hundred guineas for your apprehension, for mine?

"I had my eye upon you in all your wanderings. You have taken no
material step through their whole course with which I have not been
acquainted. I meditated to do you good. I have spilt no blood but that
of Tyrrel: that was in the moment of passion; and it has been the
subject of my uninterrupted and hourly remorse. I have connived at no
man's fate but that of the Hawkinses: they could no otherwise have been
saved, than by my acknowledging myself a murderer. The rest of my life
has been spent in acts of benevolence.

"I meditated to do you good. For that reason I was willing to prove you.
You pretended to act towards me with consideration and forbearance. If
you had persisted in that to the end, I would yet have found a way to
reward you. I left you to your own discretion. You might show the
impotent malignity of your own heart; but, in the circumstances in which
you were then placed, I knew you could not hurt me. Your forbearance has
proved, as I all along suspected, empty and treacherous. You have
attempted to blast my reputation. You have sought to disclose the select
and eternal secret of my soul. Because you have done that, I will never
forgive you. I will remember it to my latest breath. The memory shall
survive me, when my existence is no more. Do you think you are out of
the reach of my power, because a court of justice has acquitted you?"

While Mr. Falkland was speaking a sudden distemper came over his
countenance, his whole frame was shaken by an i