n her present position.
I really think they make the great happiness, and interest, and
amusement of her life, and prevent her from feeling lonely and dried
up at heart. It is a pleasant reflection to me to remember this, and
perhaps it may be the same to you, for which reason only I speak of it.

As for the other persons connected with the troubles at Darrock Hall,
I may mention the vile woman Josephine first, so as to have the sooner
done with her. Mr. Dark's guess, when he tried to account for her want
of cunning in hiding the stolen property, by saying that her mind might
have had more weighing on it than she was able to bear, turned out to b
e nothing less than the plain and awful truth. After she had been
found guilty of the robbery, and had been condemned to seven years'
transportation, a worse sentence fell upon her from a higher tribunal
than any in this world. While she was still in the county jail, previous
to her removal, her mind gave way, the madness breaking out in an
attempt to set fire to the prison. Her case was pronounced to be
hopeless from the first. The lawful asylum received her, and the lawful
asylum will keep her to the end of her days.

Mr. James Smith, who, in my humble opinion, deserved hanging by law, or
drowning by accident at least, lived quietly abroad with his Scotch
wife (or no wife) for two years, and then died in the most quiet
and customary manner, in his bed, after a short illness. His end was
described to me as a "highly edifying one." But as he was also reported
to have sent his forgiveness to his wife--which was as much as to say
that _he_ was the injured person of the two--I take leave to consider
that he was the same impudent vagabond in his last moments that he
had been all his life. His Scotch widow has married again, and is now
settled in London. I hope her husband is all her own property this time.

Mr. Meeke must not be forgotten, although he has dropped out of the
latter part of my story because he had nothing to do with the serious
events which followed Josephine's perjury. In the confusion and
wretchedness of that time, he was treated with very little ceremony, and
was quite passed over when we left the neighborhood. After pining and
fretting some time, as we afterward heard, in his lonely parsonage,
he resigned his living at the first chance he got, and took a sort of
under-chaplain's place in an English chapel abroad. He writes to my
mistress once or twice a year to