to
have the honor of awakening them about next June twelvemonth, and not as
at present advised before!"

Everything fortunately turned out as Mr. Ferret anticipated; and when a
few months had glided by, Clara Brandon was a memory only, save of course
to the few entrusted with the secret.

The whirligig of time continued as ever to speed on its course, and bring
round in due season its destined revenges. The health, mental and bodily,
of Miss Brandon rapidly improved under the kind and judicious treatment
of Mr. and Mrs. Derwent; and long before the attainment of her majority,
were pronounced by competent authority to be thoroughly re-established.
The day following that which completed her twentyfirst year, Mr. Ferret,
armed with the necessary authority, had the pleasure of announcing to the
relict of Major Brandon (he had been dead some months), and to her brutal
son, that they must forthwith depart from the home in which they, to the
very moment of his announcement, thought themselves secure; and surrender
every shilling of the property they had so long dreamt was their own.
They were prostrated by the intelligence, and proved as mean and servile
in the hour of adversity, as they had been insolent and cruel in the day
of fancied success and prosperity. The pension of three hundred pounds a
year for both their lives, proffered by Miss Brandon, was eagerly
accepted; and they returned to the obscurity from which they had by
accident emerged.

About six months afterwards, I had the pleasure of drawing up the
marriage settlement between Clara Brandon and Herbert Burford; and a
twelvemonth after, that of standing sponsor to one of the lustiest brats
ever sprinkled at a font: none of which delightful results, if we are to
believe Mr. Ferret, would have ever been arrived at had not he, at a very
critical moment, refused to take counsel's opinion upon the virtues,
capabilities, and powers contained in the great writ of _habeas corpus
ad subjiciendum_.

ESTHER MASON.

About forty years ago, Jabez Woodford, a foreman of shipwrights in the
Plymouth dockyard, whilst carelessly crossing one of the transverse beams
of a seventy-four gun-ship, building in that arsenal, missed his footing,
fell to the bottom of the hold of the huge vessel, and was killed on the
spot. He left a widow and one child--a boy seven years of age, of placid,
endearing disposition, but weak intellect--almost in a state of
destitution. He had been