ght so
intense as that to which he had at last attained, must necessarily be
the very quintessence of iniquity. Being resolved to go through with it
at all hazards, he felt proportionately wild and reckless. Such a state
of commotion was there in his heaving bosom, owing to contradictory and
conflicting elements, that he felt at one moment inclined to lie down
and shout for joy, and the next, to sink into the earth with terror.

Time, which proverbially works wonderful changes, at length subdued the
urchin to a condition of calm goodness and felicity, that would have
rejoiced his mother's heart, had it only been brought on in ordinary
circumstances at home.

There is a piece of waste ground lying between St. Just and the sea--a
sort of common, covered with heath and furze--on which the ancient
Britons have left their indelible mark, in the shape of pits and hollows
and trenches, with their relative mounds and hillocks. Here, in the
days of old, our worthy but illiterate forefathers had grubbed and dug
and turned up every square foot of the soil, like a colony of gigantic
rabbits, in order to supply the precious metal of the country to the
Phoenicians, Jews, and Greeks.

The ground on this common is so riddled with holes of all sizes and
shapes, utterly unguarded by any kind of fence, that it requires care on
the part of the pedestrian who traverses the place even in daylight.
Hence the mothers of St. Just are naturally anxious that the younger
members of their families should not go near the common, and the younger
members are as naturally anxious that they should visit it.

Thither, in the course of time--for it was not far distant--the baby
Maggot naturally trended; proceeding on the principle of "short stages
and long rests." Never in his life--so he thought--had he seen such
bright and beautiful flowers, such green grass, and such lovely yellow
sand, as that which appeared here and there at the mouths of the holes
and old shafts, or such a delicious balmy and sweet-scented breeze as
that which came off the Atlantic and swept across the common. No wonder
that his eyes drank in the beautiful sights, for they had seen little of
earth hitherto, save the four walls of his father's cottage and the dead
garden wall in front of it; no wonder that his nostrils dilated to
receive the sweet odours, for they had up to that date lived upon air
which had to cross a noisome and stagnant pool of filth before it
entered his