ged his hands, and sold his oxen. On
looking over his accounts, he found that he was over a thousand dollars
in debt: In order to pay this, he sold the balance of his land, and
then advertised his saw-mill for sale in all the county papers, and in
the State Gazette.

Meantime, the suit which had been instituted on the note given to
Barnaby came up for trial, and Jordan made an effort to defend it on
the plea that value had not been received. His fifty acres of land were
gone, and all that remained of his six thousand dollars, were a
half-weatherboarded, frame building, called a saw-mill, in which were a
secondhand steam-engine, some rough gearing, and a few saws. This stood
in the centre of a small piece of ground--perhaps the fourth of an
acre--upon which there was the moderate annual rent of one hundred
dollars! More than the whole building, leaving out the engine, would
sell for.

After waiting for two months, and not receiving an offer for the mill,
he sold the engine for a hundred and fifty dollars, and abandoned the
old frame building in which it had stood, to the owner of the land for
rent, on condition of his cancelling the lease, that had still three
years and a half to run.

His defence of the suit availed nothing. Judgment was obtained upon the
note, an execution issued, and, as there was no longer any property in
the young man's possession, his person was seized and thrown into the
county prison.

From the time old Mr. Page considered himself insulted by Jordan, all
intercourse between them had ceased. The latter had not considered
himself free to visit any longer at his house, and therefore no meeting
between him and Edith had taken place for three months.

The cause of so sudden a cessation of her lover's visits, all unknown
to Edith, was a great affliction to the maiden. Her father noticed that
her countenance wore a troubled aspect, and that she scarcely tasted
food when at the table. This did not, in any way, lessen the number of
his self-reproaches for having suffered a young man to ruin himself,
when a word from him might have saved him.

Edith was paying a visit to a friend one day, the daughter of a lawyer.
While conversing, the friend said--

"Poor Jordan? Have you heard of his misfortunes?"

"No! What are they?" And Edith turned pale. The friend was not aware of
her interest in him.

"He was terribly cheated in some saw-mill property he bought," she made
answer, "and has since lost eve