reach him, but found I could do neither: his own wild cries and
imprecations drowned my voice, and there were impassable fences
between the high-road and the fields across which he madly hasted.

The flames were swift this time, and defied the efforts of the
servants and husbandmen who had come to the rescue, to stay, much less
to quell them. Eagerly as I rode, Dutton arrived before the blazing
pile at nearly the same moment as myself, and even as he fiercely
struggled with two or three men, who strove by main force to prevent
him from rushing into the flames, only to meet with certain death, the
roof and floors of the building fell in with a sudden crash. He
believed that all was over with the child, and again hurling forth
the wild despairing cry I had twice before heard that evening, he
fell down, as if smitten by lightning, upon the hard frosty road.

It was many days ere the unhappy, sinful man recovered his senses,
many weeks before he was restored to his accustomed health. Very
cautiously had the intelligence been communicated to him, that Annie
had not met the terrible fate, the image of which had incessantly
pursued him through his fevered dreams. He was a deeply grateful, and,
I believe, a penitent and altogether changed man. He purchased,
through my agency, a valuable farm in a distant county, in order to be
out of the way, not only of Hamblin, on whom he settled two hundred a
year, but of others, myself included, who knew or suspected him of the
foul intention he had conceived against his son-in-law, and which, but
for Mrs Rivers, would, on the last occasion, have been in all
probability successful, so cunningly had the evidence of circumstances
been devised. 'I have been,' said James Dutton to me at the last
interview I had with him, 'all my life an overweening self-confident
fool. At Romford, I boasted to you that my children should ally
themselves with the landed gentry of the country, and see the result!
The future, please God, shall find me in my duty--mindful only of
that, and content, whilst so acting, with whatever shall befall me or
mine.'

Dutton continues to prosper in the world; Hamblin died several years
ago of delirium tremens; and Annie, I hear, _will_ in all probability
marry into the squirearchy of the country. All this is not perhaps
what is called poetical justice, but my experience has been with the
actual, not the ideal world.

MEMORIALS OF THE DODO.

Among the thousand-an