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will. Life would be so worthless, the betrayal of my secret would be but as a feather, weighed against the sweet thought of assuaging your sorrow."

"You frighten me," murmured Helen, struggling with emotion. "In mercy," he exclaimed, "not tears, yet. I will be brief. One of my sins has been wooing you, with the dark knowledge in my breast that a crime of my early life and its consequences might well be considered an insuperable obstacle to our union. Oh! forgive me this this at least." And he flung himself on his knees before her, and buried his face in her garments.

"What terror is to come? Quick-quick; in pity tell me." "No; forgive me this last fault first.

"Yes, yes,

she murmured, and her hand leaned heavily on his shoulder. The act unnerved him, and a shower of tears rained from his eyes. "Tell me," again she whispered.

"I cannot yet. Bear with me."

"Then I will guess."

"Ay, do."

With a shudder as she put each fearful question, she began― "Have you shed human blood, protected by the laws of honour, and feel that now you are a murderer?"

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"I never raised my arm in anger against aught that has breath; I never so much as kicked a snarling cur from my path.' "Have you been a false friend, deceiving where you were trusted?"

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"I cannot recal to mind a lie I ever told."

Once more Helen's hand sought that of her lover; but she withdrew it as a terrible thought rushed to her mind. She paused ere she could give it words. At last she said, "Have you been guided by the code of man's moralities, and won a heart only to fling it from you? or-or been guilty of the deeper, darker wrong still?"

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My conscience is singularly free from all such stains. They who do these things speak not of them as crimes." And he looked up and met the tearful gaze of Helen Travers, without his own lids drooping.

"Then I will wed you," she exclaimed, after a moment's pause, and only as your wife will learn this dreadful secret."

"You will?" and William Johnson started to his feet as one who had received an electric shock.

"I will."

For a moment she yielded to his embrace, but he released her quickly. "You would so wed me," he exclaimed, "but you shall not. The dear memory of your words is a happiness Fate cannot take from me; it gives me strength to complete the tragedy. Listen. These limbs have borne the manacles the law furnishes to the convicted thief; this form has quailed in the felon's dock beneath the callous stare of the stranger multitude; but even then I did not lie. I owned that I had stolen the means to purchase food for a famishing mother. The name which I have dared to ask you to bear, is for ever enrolled in the chronicles of crime. convict crossed the seas, and was a slave for the seven brightest years of his youth. Helen-Miss Travers, you do not scream, or faint, or wither me with a look. Only tears, quiet, common tears! Are you woman or angel?"

"Be calm, and tell me all."

The

"You will believe I meant to replace the note I-I—stole, though the judge would not credit my story. This is all I have to tell; for why should I picture the haunting presence of a memory, and the worthlessness of that wealth which descended to me from the relative who exposed my youth to temptation, and left my mother to perish?"

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The future; the happy future. May it make you forget the past!-William!"

"Helen!"

At her feet once more; but now with child-like sobs, and breathing passionate exclamations, and fervent blessings.

It was the next day; and that burst of wild tumultuous joy had given place to a serener happiness on the part of William Johnson, while a softer and more thoughtful expression reigned on the face of Helen.

"I have a compact to propose," said she, laying her hand upon his arm, and looking up calmly, yet affectionately in his face; let us for the future speak not of this dark thing, except indeed there be just necessity and occasion for renewing the subject. Let it be a sacred deposit, of which each has the key, but do not suffer it to belong to our lives by frequent discourse or thought of it. Thus may time heap bright realities to hide and stifle these smouldering ashes. You tell me that your common name has been to you a shelter from suspicion; that your secret rests with one tried and trusted friend; and that the world among its common blunders deems your love of retirement the spirit of pride and exclusiveness.

I will but look at the result of the leisure that retirement has afforded, the cultivated intellect, and the habits of simple enjoyment. Yet whence came your enlarged sympathies with humanity? These are not fostered by hermit-like retirement.

"Can you ask? You are silent. I need not tell you how much is known intuitively by one who has erred and suffered.” "And expiated!""

Ah, deep the meaning of that word which burst spontaneously from the heart which felt aright! Deeper and higher, more world-embracing such Wisdom than aught that was ever extracted by the casuistry of the schools. The Merciful God by His instruments, the mysteries of inexhaustible nature, heals the wounds and lesser ills of the body until it becomes whole again. And must the wounds of the Soul fester for ever? What is Man that he dares pluck Hope from the breast of his fellow? And is not the punishment he inflicts for crime but Satan's work on earth, except so far as it prevents, amends-and through the suffering and amendment expiates? The poet paints what should be, rather than what is, when he declares there is a Future for all who have the virtue to repent and the energy to atone." May he prove the Poet Prophet!

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Of the myriad real tragedies which are hidden behind the veil of conventional life, not a few are there in which woman plays a ministering angel; and builds, amid the wreck of happiness, a saving ark by the spell of her trusting faith, and a Wisdom that is of the Heart! C. T.

"THE SONG OF THE SHIRT."

WHAT! naked Truth? Ay, let Truth stand confess'd,
Bright lovely Truth! thy nakedness thy boast,

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'Beauty when unadorn'd adorn'd the most!"
Who blesseth thee is in himself most bless'd:
View Falsehood in her garb of tinsel dress'd,
Like some vain conjurer on the mimic stage
Misleading man in every clime and age,
Making poor Virtue virtuously distress'd:
Sin boasts a cloak to hide her form uncouth,
Flattery a veil, Deceit a mask can find,
"Why should not I," half jestingly said Truth,
"Have for myself a something of the kind?".
And then Truth glorious in her beauty stood
And said, "Behold! I've my immortal Hood."

R. V. H.

THE HEDGEHOG LETTERS.

CONTAINING THE OPINIONS AND ADVENTURES OF JUNIPER HEDGEHOG, CAEMAN, LONDON; AND WRITTEN TO HIS RELATIVES AND ACQUAINTANCE, IN VARIOUS PARTS OF THE WORLD.

LETTER XXIX. TO LORD NUGENT.

MY LORD, I hope you'll excuse this freedom in me who am only a cabman. But the truth is, as I've somewhere said before, I can't help looking on any of my fare but as in the light of an acquaintance. And in this way I reckon, I know, a lot of peers, and lords, and judges, and bishops. In fact, who is there so great that some time in his life he doesn't ride in a cab-that is, when he rides by himself?-for I have known parties who've been so ashamed of the thing, that they've made me set 'em down half a street off. Very poor, twopenny-halfpenny pride this! But if in this jolly England we were to build hospitals for all the bold Britons that were sick with it,—wouldn't there be rare work for the bricklayers!

As I had the pleasure of taking up your lordship at Exeter Hall from the great meeting for doing away with public killing by the hangman, I can't help writing you these few lines on what has been said and hinted upon that matter. There's no doubt that a good many folks stickle for hanging as they'd stickle for good, strong, thick, stupifying port,-something fine and fruity; to show the hardness of their heads and the strength of their stomachs. And so they call a dislike to Jack Ketch nothing less than "sickly sentimentality." Once it was "morbid sympathy;" but that's gone out. Now, not to like the halter is to be sickly and sentimental; whilst to enjoy the Old Bailey use of hemp is to show our manhood. The British Lion, these folks think, would be no more than a milk-lapping puppy-dog, if now and then, there wasn't given to him a live murderer. Then he wags his tail; then he roars, and shows what is called the majesty of the law (tho' sometimes, I must say it, its majesty is of a very Bartlemy-fair sort, indeed); then he proves that law must be

carnivorous, I think they call it, to live at all. And we've only to think a while of the old times to remember the judges and grave folks who declared that if the majesty of the law (that is, the British Lion from the Royal Arms) didn't feed upon men for doing fifty other things besides blood-shedding,-he'd mope, fall sick, take the mange, and die. Nevertheless, one by one the British Lion lost his meals of human flesh-and though certain folks swore he must sink under it, he's as strong as ever on a less bloody diet.

The fact is, everybody had his own hobby about hanging; everybody thought his own particular bit of property the bit of all bits to be protected by Jack Ketch; otherwise what sheep would be stole what horses run away with! Could women-the dear little doves!-think themselves safe, if bigamy didn't lead to Tyburn ? Wouldn't every other man buy two wedding rings, just as men went sporting with double-barrelled guns to hit two birds one after the other ? Well, they didn't hang any longer for sheep and horses, and still their owners sleep in their beds, while the beasts are out in the fields. They didn't hang for bigamy--and though for some time no woman would accept a man afore all the parish registers had been searched to know if he was really single or not, now we find that they are cajoled to go to church, quite content to take the man's word upon the matter. Yet there was a time when no woman thought herself safe if she wasn't protected by a halter.

It's the same thing, mind, with a good many people who'd hang for murder. They think-I know it-that there's a crowd of folks who 're only waiting for the putting down of the hangman, to run out like mad Malays, and cut and thrust at their neighbours. "I tell you what," said my friend Jack Blackgang to me the other day-"I tell you what; if they wasn't to hang a man for murder, I shouldn't sleep peaceably in my bed." Now, at the very time Jack said this, I'm sure he quite forgot that burglary was no longer capital; and that therefore he 'd been quietly sleeping, safe in the thought that his door-post was guarded by the hangman.

'Twould be looked upon as a shocking matter now-in fact, Newgate stones would be torn up against it-to hang a little boy of fifteen for passing a forged twenty-shilling bank rag,—and yet such child murder has been done; otherwise would the gentlemen of the Bank parlour have thought their gold safe even in their very cellars? The Lion Majesty of the Law was to be satisfied; and therefore he made his Newgate breakfasts off men and chil

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