.

Such inquiries, I know, are of the same nature with those we make at an
inn in traveling, when we look into every corner and closet, for fear of
a villain; yet should be frighted out of our wits, were we to find one.
But 'tis better to detect such a one when awake and up, than to be
attacked by him when in bed and asleep.

I am glad you have your clothes. But no money! No books but a Spira, a
Drexelius, and a Practice of Piety! Those who sent the latter ought to
have kept it for themselves--But I must hurry myself from this subject.

You have exceedingly alarmed me by what you hint of his attempt to get
one of my letters. I am assured by my new informant, that he is the head
of a gang of wretched (those he brought you among, no doubt, were some of
them) who join together to betray innocent creatures, and to support one
another afterwards by violence; and were he to come at the knowledge of
the freedoms I take with him, I should be afraid to stir out without a
guard.

I am sorry to tell you, that I have reason to think, that your brother
has not laid aside his foolish plot. A sunburnt, sailor-looking fellow
was with me just now, pretending great service to you from Captain
Singleton, could he be admitted to your speech. I pleaded ignorance as
to the place of your abode. The fellow was too well instructed for me to
get any thing out of him.

I wept for two hours incessantly on reading your's, which enclosed that
from your cousin Morden.* My dearest creature, do not desert yourself.
Let your Anna Howe obey the call of that friendship which has united us
as one soul, and endeavour to give you consolation.

* See Letter XIX. of this volume.

I wonder not at the melancholy reflections you so often cast upon
yourself in your letters, for the step you have been forced upon one
hand, and tricked into on the other. A strange fatality! As if it were
designed to show the vanity of all human prudence. I wish, my dear, as
you hint, that both you and I have not too much prided ourselves in a
perhaps too conscious superiority over others. But I will stop--how apt
are weak minds to look out for judgments in any extraordinary event!
'Tis so far right, that it is better, and safer, and juster, to arraign
ourselves, or our dearest friends, than Providence; which must always
have wise ends to answer its dispensations.

But do not talk, as if one of your former, of being a warning only*--you
will be as excellent a