s; and this
because the characters we have known in transparent boyhood we have
known forever. Ardworth was reckless, and his whole life had been
wrecked, his whole nature materially degraded, by the want of common
thrift and prudence. His own money slipped through his fingers and left
him surrounded by creditors, whom, rigidly speaking, he thus defrauded;
but direct dishonesty was as wholly out of the chapter of his vices
as if he had been a man of the strictest principles and the steadiest
honour.

The child was gone, the father died, Lucretia returned, as we have seen
in Grabman's letter, to the house of death, to meet suspicion, and cold
looks, and menial accusations, and an inquest on the dead; but through
all this the reft tigress mourned her stolen whelp. As soon as all
evidence against her was proved legally groundless, and she had leave to
depart, she searched blindly and frantically for her lost child; but in
vain. The utter and penniless destitution in which she was left by her
husband's decease did not suffice to terminate her maddening chase. On
foot she wandered from village to village, and begged her way wherever a
false clew misled her steps.

At last, in reluctant despair, she resigned the pursuit, and found
herself one day in the midst of the streets of London, half-famished
and in rags; and before her suddenly, now grown into vigorous
youth,--blooming, sleek, and seemingly prosperous,--stood Gabriel
Varney. By her voice, as she approached and spoke, he recognized his
stepmother; and after a short pause of hesitation, he led her to his
home. It is not our purpose (for it is not necessary to those passages
of their lives from which we have selected the thread of our tale)
to follow these two, thus united, through their general career of
spoliation and crime. Birds of prey, they searched in human follies
and human errors for their food: sometimes severed, sometimes together,
their interests remained one. Varney profited by the mightier and
subtler genius of evil to which he had leashed himself; for, caring
little for luxuries, and dead to the softer senses, she abandoned to him
readily the larger share of their plunder. Under a variety of names and
disguises, through a succession of frauds, some vast and some mean, but
chiefly on the Continent, they had pursued their course, eluding all
danger and baffling all law.

Between three and four years before this period, Varney's uncle, the
painter, by one