tions, yet I never altogether approved of the match. You know I
always told you so."

"Told the devil!" cried the old man, goaded to the very verge of despair
by this new torture. "I beg your pardon, Bessy, for speaking so hastily,
but, damn it, if all the angels in Heaven had told me that Tom Hansford
could prove a traitor, I would not have believed it."

And how felt she, that wounded, trusting one, who thus in a short day
had seen the hopes and dreams of happiness, which fancy had woven in her
young heart, all rudely swept away! 'Twere wrong to lift the veil from
that poor stricken heart, now torn with grief too deep for words--too
deep, alas! for tears. With her cheek resting on her white hand, she
gazed tearlessly, but vacantly, towards the forest where he had so
lately vanished as a dream. To those who spoke to her, she answered
sadly in monosyllables, and then turned her head away, as if it were
still sweet to cherish thus the agony which consumed her. But the
bitterest drop in all this cup of woe, was the self-reproach which
mingled with her recollection of that sad scene. When he had frankly
given back her troth, she, alas! had not stayed his hand, nor by a word
had told him how truly, even in his guilt, her heart was his. And now,
she thought, when thus driven harshly into the cold world, his only
friends among the enemies to truth, his enemies its friends, how one
little word of love, or even of pity, might have redeemed him from
error, or at least have cheered him in his dark career.

But bear up bravely, sweet one; for heavier, darker sorrows yet must
cast their shadows on thy young heart, ere yet its warm pulsations cease
to beat, and it be laid at rest.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] Rest was the prescribed limit to the size of the venture.

[20] To pull down the side was a technical term with our ancestors for
cheating.

CHAPTER XII.

"Wounded in both my honour and my love;
They have pierced me in two tender parts.
Yet, could I take my just revenge,
It would in some degree assuage my smart."
_Vanbrugh._

It was at an early hour on the following morning that the queer old
chariot of Colonel Temple--one of the few, by the way, which wealth had
as yet introduced into the colony--was drawn up before the door. The two
horses of the gentlemen were standing ready saddled and bridled, in the
care of the hostler. In a few moments, the ladies,