ag, and is supposed to throw some light on his
history." Mr. Fitzgerald draws leisurely from his pocket a distained and
much-crumpled paper, written over in a bold, business-like hand, and
passes it to the man in the spectacle, as a dozen or more anxious faces
gather round, eager to explore the contents.

"He went out of the Points as mysteriously as he came in. We buried him
a bit ago, and have got Downey in the Tombs: he'll be hanged, no doubt,"
concludes the detective, laying aside his cap, and setting himself,
uninvited, into a chair. The man in the spectacles commences reading the
paper, which runs as follows:

"I have been to you an unknown, and had died such an unknown, but that
my conscience tells me I have a duty to perform. I have wronged no one,
owe no one a penny, harbor no malice against any one; I am a victim of a
broken heart, and my own melancholy. Many years ago I pursued an
honorable business in this city, and was respected and esteemed. Many
knew me, and fortune seemed to shed upon me her smiles. I married a lady
of wealth and affluence, one I loved and doted on. Our affections seemed
formed for our bond; we lived for one another; our happiness seemed
complete. But alas! an evil hour came. Ambitious of admiration, she
gradually became a slave to fashionable society, and then gave herself
up to those flatterers who hang about it, and whose chief occupation it
is to make weak-minded women vain of their own charms. Coldness, and
indifference to home, soon followed. My house was invaded, my home--that
home I regarded so sacredly--became the resort of men in whose society I
found no pleasure, with whom I had no feeling in common. I could not
remonstrate, for that would have betrayed in me a want of confidence in
the fidelity of one I loved too blindly. I was not one of those who make
life miserable in seeing a little and suspecting much. No! I forgave
many things that wounded my feelings; and my love for her would not
permit a thought to invade the sanctity of her fidelity. Business
called me into a foreign country, where I remained several months, then
returned--not, alas! to a home made happy by the purity of one I
esteemed an angel;--not to the arms of a pure, fond wife, but to find my
confidence betrayed, my home invaded--she, in whom I had treasured up my
love, polluted; and slander, like a desert wind, pouring its desolating
breath into my very heart. In my blindness I would have forgiven her,
taken