cheeked no longer, and one little boy, to the tender mercy of his
family. Old Simon showed none. He drove his son's widow from the door as
he had before driven off his son; and when he also died, an event
which occurred within a year or two, bequeathed all his property to his
daughter Deborah.

This bequest was exceedingly agreeable to Mrs. Deborah, (for she was
already of an age to assume that title,) who valued money, not certainly
for the comforts and luxuries which it may be the means of procuring,
nor even for its own sake, as the phrase goes, but for that which, to
a woman of her temper, was perhaps the highest that she was capable of
enjoying, the power which wealth confers over all who are connected with
or dependent on its possessor.

The principal subjects of her despotic dominion were the young widow and
her boy, whom she placed in a cottage near her own house, and with whose
comfort and happiness she dallied pretty much as a cat plays with the
mouse which she has got into her clutches, and lets go only to catch
again, or an angler with the trout which he has fairly hooked, and
merely suffers to struggle in the stream until it is sufficiently
exhausted to bring to land. She did not mean to be cruel, but she could
not help it; so her poor mice were mocked with the semblance of liberty,
although surrounded by restraints; and the awful paw seemingly sheathed
in velvet, whilst they were in reality never out of reach of the horrors
of the pat.

It sometimes, however, happens that the little mouse makes her escape
from madam pussy at the very moment when she seems to have the unlucky
trembler actually within her claws; and so it occurred in the present
instance.

The dwelling to which Mrs. Deborah retired after the death of her
father, was exceedingly romantic and beautiful in point of situation. It
was a small but picturesque farm-house, on the very banks of the Loddon,
a small branch of which, diverging from the parent stream, and crossed
by a pretty footbridge, swept round the homestead, the orchard
and garden, and went winding along the water meadows in a thousand
glittering meanders, until it was lost in the rich woodlands which
formed the back-ground of the picture. In the month of May, when the
orchard was full of its rosy and pearly blossoms, a forest of lovely
bloom, the meadows yellow with cowslips, and the clear brimming river,
bordered by the golden tufts of the water ranunculus, and garlanded by
t