, to speak otherwise than
this," said Wentworth, drawing me to his bosom. "You must honor this
expression of feeling as I do."

"O sir! it is the greatest honor I ever received in my life; and she,
poor thing, like Penelope, tangled up in a web so long, and free at
last! Well, it is a great joy to me to think I helped a little to cut
the ropes."

"Helped! Why, I owe every thing to you. Listen," and then as briefly as
I could I recounted the trials in store for me that very night--the
compulsory marriage, or the removal to the belfry-tower--one or the
other inevitable, and either of which must have made the proposed rescue
of the following day, on the part of Captain Wentworth and his friends,
in one sense or the other unavailing. As the wife of Gregory, or as the
prisoner of the turret, I should in one case have been morally, and in
the other physically, dead or lost forever!

Mutely, and tearfully even, was my skill in setting forth the magnitude
of the wrong, from which Mr. Burress had been instrumental in saving me,
acknowledged by my audience, not excepting Jenny the house-maid, who,
arrested on the threshold, stood wiping her eyes with her neat cotton
apron in token of sympathy.

"Caleb will be wondering what has become of me, and tired out of
watching if I don't go home at once," said Mr. Burress, after his
emotion had subsided, and accepting gracefully the civic crown with
which he had been metaphorically rewarded. Mine was in store, but how
could he dream of this?

A statue of the Greek Slave, a copy made by a master-hand, soon adorned
his window, and his bride wore pearls of price, the joint gift of Miriam
and Wardour Wentworth, a twelvemonth later, when a mistress of the
emporium was brought home, much to the solace of Caleb, who was
remembered by us also, let me not forget to add.

Truly kind and benevolent as he was, Napoleon Burress had a despotic
manner, which relaxed beneath the genial smile of Marian March.

"I must go, indeed, my dear sir" (to Dr. Pemberton), "but this night
will be memorable in my annals. God bless you all! Farewell. Afraid of
an encounter? Not I Like Horatio Cockleshell of old, I learned to carry
pistols constantly about me when I had to pass the bridge every night as
a youngster. My parents lived in Hamilton village. I still keep up the
custom, and therefore pay my fine yearly to the council."

When at last we separated, the clock was on the stroke of one, and I
went to a c