one dark night,
when we were encamped on the very same ground as that which we occupied
when we received you, three of them, Mim at their head, attacked me in
mine own habitation. I verily believe, if they had mastered me, they
would have robbed and murdered us all; except perhaps my son, whom they
thought ill-used by depriving him of Mim's instructive society. Howbeit,
I was still stirring when they invaded me, and, by the help of the poker
and a tolerably strong arm, I repelled the assailants; but that very
night I passed from the land of Egypt, and made with all possible
expedition to the nearest town, which was, as you may remember, W----."

"Here, the very next day, I learned that the house I now inhabit was to
be sold. It had (as I before said) belonged to my mother's family, and
my father had sold it a little before his death. It was the home from
which I had been stolen, and to which I had been returned: often in my
star-lit wanderings had I flown to it in thought; and now it seemed as
if Providence itself, in offering to my age the asylum I had above all
others coveted for it, was interested in my retirement from the empire
of an ungrateful people and my atonement in rest for my past sins in
migration."

"Well, sir, in short, I became the purchaser of the place you have
just seen, and I now think that, after all, there is more happiness in
reality than romance: like the laverock, here will I build my nest,--

'Here give my weary spirit rest,
And raise my low-pitched thoughts above
Earth, or what poor mortals love.'"

"And your son," said Clarence, "has he reformed?"

"Oh, yes," answered Cole. "For my part, I believe the mind is less evil
than people say it is; its great characteristic is imitation, and it
will imitate the good as well as the bad, if we will set the example.
I thank Heaven, sir, that my boy now might go from Dan to Beersheba and
not filch a groat by the way."

"What do you intend him for?" said Clarence.

"Why, he loves adventure, and, faith, I can't break him of that, for
I love it too; so I think I shall get him a commission in the army, in
order to give him a fitting and legitimate sphere wherein to indulge his
propensities."

"You could not do better," said Clarence. "But your fine sister, what
says she to your amendment?"

"Oh! she wrote me a long letter of congratulation upon it and every
other summer she is graciously pleased to pay me a visit of three months
long; at