ple believed his tale (so long after date and so unvouched), so
far as family annals were concerned, the remedy would be as bad as the
disease. Moreover, he owed his life to me, at great risk of my own; and
to pay such a debt with the hangman's rope would scarcely appear quite
honorable, even in the best society.

"It is not for me to pretend to give his motives, although from my
knowledge of his character I can guess them pretty well, perhaps. We
went our several ways in the world, neither of us very fortunate.

"One summer, in the Black Forest, I fell in with an outcast Englishman,
almost as great a vagabond as myself. He was under the ban of the law
for writing his father's name without license. He did not tell me that,
or perhaps even I might have despised him, for I never was dishonest.
But one great bond there was between us--we both detested laws and men.
My intimacy with him is the one thing in life which I am ashamed of. He
passed by a false name then, of course. But his true name was Montague
Hockin. My mother was in very weak health then, and her mind for the
most part clouded; and I need not say that she knew nothing of what I
had done for her sake. That man pretended to take the greatest interest
in her condition, and to know a doctor at Baden who could cure her.

"We avoided all cities (as he knew well), and lived in simple villages,
subsisting partly upon my work, and partly upon the little income left
by my grandfather, Thomas Hoyle. But, compared with Hockin, we were well
off; and he did his best to swindle us. Luckily all my faith in mankind
was confined to the feminine gender, and not much even of that survived.
In a very little time I saw that people may repudiate law as well from
being below as from being above it.

"Then he came one night, with the finest style and noblest contempt
of every thing. We must prepare ourselves for great news, and all our
kindness to him would be repaid tenfold in a week or two. Let me go into
Freyburg that time to-morrow night, and listen. I asked him nothing as
to what he meant, for I was beginning to weary of him, as of every body.
However, I thought it just worth while, having some one who bought
my wicker-work, to enter the outskirts of the town on the following
evening, and wait to be told if any news was stirring. And the people
were amazed at my not knowing that last night the wife of an English
lord--for so they called him, though no lord yet--had run away wi