y.

"Is it? If ever you are free again, lady, visit the most destitute homes
in the world, and then the best alms-houses in your reach, and find out
for yourself whether it is not better to die a free beggar than to live
an imprisoned pauper. The manner in which Workhouse Charity 'whips the
devil round the stump' by satisfying its conscience without benefiting
its object, is one of the funniest jokes, as well as one of the most
curious subjects of study, that can be found in social life."

"I am sorry to hear you say so; but go on with your story."

"My father, bowed down with remorse for his crime, and grief for the
loss of his wife, found yet something to live for in me, his only child.
He brought me away to the coast of France, where he and his pals were
carrying on a very successful business in the smuggling line.

"They run goods to and fro between the French and English shores of the
Channel. One day he was fatally wounded in an encounter with the Excise
officers, near St. Margaret's. He was taken prisoner, but all the other
members of his band escaped. When he knew he was dying, he sent for me,
and the officers were kind enough to have me looked up.

"I was then wandering about the village in a state of destitution, in
which I must have perished but for the kindness of the poorest among the
poor, who shared their crusts and their pallets with me.

"I was taken to my father, who was dying in the Dover jail. He gave me
the silver casket, telling me what a sacred heirloom it was, and how he
had kept it through every temptation to part with it, and that I must
guard it as the most precious jewel of my life; for that one day it
might be the means of making me a lady."

"I didn't say 'Bosh' to my dying father; but I have said 'Bosh' ever
since, every time I have thought of that bauble! It never did any good
to my father, or my grandfather, and it is not likely to relent in my
favor. Beyond the fact that it proves my great-grandmother, the Gipsy
Queen, to have been an honest woman, I don't see any use it is to her
descendants."

"I have it still, as I told you before; because from the hour of my poor
father's death, I have never known a want, or felt a temptation to part
with it. I was adopted by his band, who have always treated me like a
princess."

"But I have a sort of spite against it, for all that, for it never yet
did what was expected of it; and so, the first time I find myself hungry
without the means