fs than those connected with the fate of
Welbeck. She is not unmindful of you; she knows you to be sick and in
prison; and I came to do for you whatever office your condition might
require, and I came at her suggestion. She, alas! has full employment
for her tears in watering the grave of her child."

He started. "What! dead? Say you that the child is dead?"

"It is dead. I witnessed its death. I saw it expire in the arms of its
mother; that mother whom I formerly met under your roof blooming and
gay, but whom calamity has tarnished and withered. I saw her in the
raiment of poverty, under an accursed roof: desolate; alone; unsolaced
by the countenance or sympathy of human beings; approached only by those
who mock at her distress, set snares for her innocence, and push her to
infamy. I saw her leaning over the face of her dying babe."

Welbeck put his hands to his head, and exclaimed, "Curses on thy lips,
infernal messenger! Chant elsewhere thy rueful ditty! Vanish! if thou
wouldst not feel in thy heart fangs red with blood less guilty than
thine."

Till this moment the uproar in Welbeck's mind appeared to hinder him
from distinctly recognising his visitant. Now it seemed as if the
incidents of our last interview suddenly sprung up in his remembrance.

"What! This is the villain that rifled my cabinet, the maker of my
poverty and of all the evils which it has since engendered! That has led
me to a prison! Execrable fool! you are the author of the scene that you
describe, and of horrors without number and name. To whatever crimes I
have been urged since that interview, and the fit of madness that made
you destroy my property, they spring from your act; they flowed from
necessity, which, had you held your hand at that fateful moment, would
never have existed.

"How dare you thrust yourself upon my privacy? Why am I not alone? Fly!
and let my miseries want, at least, the aggravation of beholding their
author. My eyes loathe the sight of thee! My heart would suffocate thee
with its own bitterness! Begone!"

"I know not," I answered, "why innocence should tremble at the ravings
of a lunatic; why it should be overwhelmed by unmerited reproaches! Why
it should not deplore the errors of its foe, labour to correct those
errors, and----"

"Thank thy fate, youth, that my hands are tied up by my scorn; thank thy
fate that no weapon is within reach. Much has passed since I saw thee,
and I am a new man. I am no longer inconst