e sacred and human.

_Hel._ Suffering, but too credulous girl! have you then trusted to his
vows?

_Fan._ How, madam! was I to blame, loving as I did, to trust in vows so
solemn? could I suppose he would dare to break them, because our
marriage was performed in secret?

_Hel._ Your marriage, child! Good Heavens, you amaze me! but here we may
be interrupted--this way with me. If this indeed be so all may be well
again: for though he may be dead to _feeling_ be assured he is alive to
_fear_: the man who once descends to be a villain is generally observed
to be at heart a coward. [_Exeunt._

SCENE II.--_The door of a country inn._--Ponder _sitting on a
portmanteau._

_Ponder._ I've heard that intense thinking has driven some philosophers
mad!--now if this should happen to _me_, 'twill never be the fate of my
young patron, Mr. Charles Austencourt, whom I have suddenly met on his
sudden return from sea, and who never thinks at all. Poor gentleman, he
little thinks what--

_Enter_ Charles Austencourt.

_Charles._ Not gone yet? How comes it you are not on the road to my
father? Is the fellow deaf or dumb. Ponder! are ye asleep?

_Pon._ I'm thinking, whether I am or not.

_Charles._ And what wise scheme now occupies your thoughts?

_Pon._ Sir, I confess the subject is beneath me (_pointing to the
portmanteau._)

_Char._ The weight of the portmanteau, I suppose, alarms you.

_Pon._ If that was my heaviest misfortune, sir, I could carry double
with all my heart. No, sir, I was thinking that as your father, sir
Rowland, sent you on a cruize, for some cause best known to himself; and
as you have thought proper to return for some cause best known to
_yourself_, the chances of war, if I may be allowed the expression, are,
that the contents of that trunk will be your only inheritance, or, in
other words, that your father will cut you off with a shilling--and now
I'm thinking--

_Char._ No doubt--thinking takes up so many of your waking hours, that
you seldom find time for _doing_. And so you have, since my departure,
turned your thinking faculties to the law.

_Pon._ Yes, sir; when you gave me notice to quit, I found it so hard to
live honestly, that lest the law should take to me, I took to the law:
and so articled my self to Mr. O'Dedimus, the attorney in our town: but
there is a thought unconnected with law that has occupied my head every
moment since we met.

_Char._ Pr'ythee dismiss your thought, and get