compliments and attentions which would be sure to make him her own, and, Arachne like, when she had rendered him totally helpless she would put him by in store to marry, in all probability, when the before-spoken-of Easter holidays arrived. Well, and what then? Was it by any fault of mine that this had occurred? Had I anything to reproach myself with? What sin of omission or commission had I been guilty of which ought, in any reasonable case, to have. produced such results? I asked myself the question over and over again, and received from myself the same answers every time. I searched every corner of my mind in vain for one little morsel of just self-condemnation, but none could I find, and at last I worked myself up into a feeling not altogether fraternal, and wound up my soliloquy with "Why, then, let him go to the--I won't write what I said let him go his own way."

This came out impromptu, and I declare free from all selfishness of feeling; but a moment's reflection brought to my view the startling fact

that if Cuthbert went to the place I thought of, wherever it might be, in one direction, I must infallibly go thither in another. He was, as I have often recorded, and oftener felt, the "prop that did sustain my house," and what was to happen if I treated this letter and its writer with the scorn they seemed to me so richly to merit? I should only seal my destiny, and inflict a wound which I was well assured no time or circumstance could heal.

66

Speaking of a choice of difficulties, Swift asks,

Supposing the body of the earth were a great ball of the finest sand, and that a single grain or particle of this sand should be annihilated every thousand years. Supposing that you had it in your choice to be happy all the while this prodigious mass of sand was consuming by this slow method until there was not a grain of it left, on condition that you were to be miserable ever after; or supposing that you might be happy ever after, on condition you would be miserable until the whole mass of sand were thus annihilated at the rate of one sand in a thousand

years; which of these two cases would you make your choice?"

This question seemed particularly apposite and applicable to my case-Should I pocket all the affronts I had received, and continue dreaming on during poor Cuthbert's life, in a sort of negative hope of his ultimate return to a just, fraternal, and equitable feeling towards me, and his consequent fulfilment of all the promises he had made, and the realization of all the expectations he had raised, or at once exhibit what nobody could deny would be a just resentment at his abandonment of me in favour of aliens to our blood in the first instance, and in the last of a perfect stranger, and, by thus giving way to my natural feelings, now decide my fate as related to the future expression of his sentiments and the consequent disposition of his property?

If I had been alone-single in the world as Cuthbert found me when we so strangely met at Gosport-I know how I should have settled

the affair. I should have got rid of the difficulty much after the Hibernian manner in which Alexander untied the Gordian knot by cutting it: but the case was now different; I was a husband and a father, and should not have ventured to marry, as he knew, had he not placed me in a position which entitled me to ask and receive such a blessing as a wife like Harriet.

Yet Harriet would have married me for myself alone,-nay, she had proved her sincerity upon that point by subjecting herself to trials and difficulties with a devotion, and even heroism, not to be expected from one so young and so little knowing in the wide world's ways. What had been the expression of her sentiments upon this very subject a day or two before? I had anticipated what would happen, had touched upon it exactly what might have been calculated upon-and then, after all, as she said, we could be happy in a smaller house, with a smaller establishment, to be supported on a smaller income. Well, then, why not at once fire the

train, return no answer to Mrs. Brandyball's fine, figurative, free-and-easy rigmarole, but write direct to my brother a letter of remonstrance, of reproach even, and endeavour, if possible, to rouse him to a sense of his own situation and of mine.

Of course I did not hastily put any scheme of this sort into execution, for-which, indeed, was one of the most painful parts of the business -I felt it absolutely necessary to consult Harriet, although confident of her acquiescence. Fuller says, "A good wife sets up a sail according to the keel of her husband's estate;" and I was certain that in all she had said upon the last occasion I took of mentioning my suspicions of Cuthbert's defection, she was as sincere and true as I had ever found her in all other matters; but it grieved me to be obliged to trouble her so far as even to grant her acquiescence. Nevertheless, that was my course, and I resolved to hold a council with her so soon as any intelligence arrived from Sniggs with regard to the boy, the nature of which might greatly influence