worth of
landed property within the week.

Sweeping measures, of whatever nature they be, have always been in favor
with the masses; never was any legislation so popular as the guillotine!

Evening was closing in, the gloomy ending of a gloomy day in winter, and
Sybella Kellett sat at the window anxiously watching for her father's
return. The last two days had been passed by her in a state of feverish
uneasiness. Since her father's attendance at the custom-house ceased,--.
for he had been formally dismissed at the beginning of the week,--his
manner had exhibited strange alternations of wild excitement and deep
depression. At times he would move hurriedly about, talking rapidly,
sometimes singing to himself; at others he would sit in a state of
torpor for hours. He drank, too, affecting some passing pain or
some uneasiness as an excuse for the whiskey-bottle; and when gently
remonstrated with on the evil consequences, became fearfully passionate
and excited. "I suppose I 'll be called a drunkard next; there 's
nothing more likely than I 'll be told it was my own sottish
habits brought all this ruin upon me. 'He 's a sot.'--'He 's never
sober.'--'Ask his own daughter about him.'" And then stimulating
himself, he would become furious with rage. As constantly, too, did he
inveigh against Dunn, saying that it was he that ruined him, and that
had he not listened to his treacherous counsels he might have arranged
matters with his creditors. From these bursts of passion he would
fall into moods of deepest melancholy, accusing his own folly and
recklessness as the cause of all his misfortunes, and even pushing
self-condemnation so far as to assert that it was his misconduct and
waste had driven poor Jack from home and made him enlist as a soldier.

Bella could not but see that his intellect was affected and his judgment
impaired, and she made innumerable pretexts to be ever near him. Now she
pretended that she required air and exercise, that her spirits were low,
and needed companionship. Then she affected to have little purchases to
make in town, and asked him to bear her company. At length he showed a
restlessness under this restraint that obliged her to relax it; he even
dropped chance words as if he suspected that he was the object of some
unusual care and supervision. "There's no need of watching me," said he,
rudely, to her on the morning that preceded the sale; "I 'm in no want
of a keeper. They 'll see Paul Kellett 's