ance that they were alone, she made him solemnly vow to give the
child every care in any circumstances that might arise, if it should
please Heaven to take her. This, of course, he readily promised. Then,
after some hesitation, she told him that she could not die with a
falsehood upon her soul, and dire deceit in her life; she must make a
terrible confession to him before her lips were sealed for ever. She
thereupon related an incident concerning the baby's parentage, which was
not as he supposed.

Timothy Petrick, though a quick-feeling man, was not of a sort to show
nerves outwardly; and he bore himself as heroically as he possibly could
do in this trying moment of his life. That same night his wife died; and
while she lay dead, and before her funeral, he hastened to the bedside of
his sick grandfather, and revealed to him all that had happened: the
baby's birth, his wife's confession, and her death, beseeching the aged
man, as he loved him, to bestir himself now, at the eleventh hour, and
alter his will so as to dish the intruder. Old Timothy, seeing matters
in the same light as his grandson, required no urging against allowing
anything to stand in the way of legitimate inheritance; he executed
another will, limiting the entail to Timothy his grandson, for life, and
his male heirs thereafter to be born; after them to his other grandson
Edward, and Edward's heirs. Thus the newly-born infant, who had been the
centre of so many hopes, was cut off and scorned as none of the elect.

The old mortgagee lived but a short time after this, the excitement of
the discovery having told upon him considerably, and he was gathered to
his fathers like the most charitable man in his neighbourhood. Both wife
and grandparent being buried, Timothy settled down to his usual life as
well as he was able, mentally satisfied that he had by prompt action
defeated the consequences of such dire domestic treachery as had been
shown towards him, and resolving to marry a second time as soon as he
could satisfy himself in the choice of a wife.

But men do not always know themselves. The embittered state of Timothy
Petrick's mind bred in him by degrees such a hatred and mistrust of
womankind that, though several specimens of high attractiveness came
under his eyes, he could not bring himself to the point of proposing
marriage. He dreaded to take up the position of husband a second time,
discerning a trap in every petticoat, and a Slough of