the tedious days which my Harriet's presence had ceased to brighten."-When she would have expressed the warmth of her gratitude for his services; Speak not of them," said he; “ I only risked a life in thy defence, which, without thee, it is nothing to possess.

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They now reached that inn to which Sindall had directed them; where, if they found a homely, yet it was a cordial reception. The landlady, who had the most obliging and attentive behaviour in the world, having heard of the accident which had befallen the lady, produced some waters, which, she said, were highly cordial, and begged Miss Annesly to take a large glass of them; informing her, that they were made after a receipt of her grandmother's, who was one of the most notable doctresses in the country. Sir Thomas, however, was not satisfied with this prescription alone, but dispatched one of his servants to fetch a neighbouring surgeon, as Miss Annesly's alarm, he said, might have more serious consequences than people, ignorant of such things, could imagine. For this surgeon, indeed, there seemed more employments than one; the sleeve of Sir Thomas's shirt was discovered to be all over blood, owing, as he imagined, to the grazing of a pistol-ball which had been fired at him. This himself treated very lightly, but it awakened the fears and tenderness of Harriet in the liveliest manner.

The landlady now put a question, which indeed might naturally have suggested itself be fore; to wit, Whom they suspected to be the instigators of this outrage? Sir Thomas answered, that, for his part, he could form no probable conjecture about the matter; and, turning to Miss Annesly, asked her opinion on the subject; "Sure," said he, "it cannot have been that ruffian, who was rude to you at the inn where we dined?" Harriet answered, that she could very well suppose it might; add ing, that though, in the confusion, she did not pretend to have taken very distinct notice of things, yet she thought there was a person standing at the door, near to that drunken gentleman, who had some resemblance of the man that sat by her in the chaise.

They were interrupted by the arrival of the surgeon, which, from the vigilance of the servant, happened in a much shorter time than could have been expected; and Harriet peremptorily insisted, that before he took any charge of her, he should examine and dress the wound on Sir Thomas's arm. To this, therefore, the Baronet was obliged to consent; and after having been some time with the operator in an adjoining chamber, they returned together; Sir Thomas's arm being slung in a piece of crape, and the surgeon declaring, highly to Miss Annesly's satisfaction, that, with proper care, there was no sort of danger; though, he

added, that if the shot had taken a direction but half an inch more to the left, it would have shattered the bone to pieces. This last declaration drove the blood again from Harriet's cheek, and contributed perhaps, more than any thing else, to that quickness and tremulation of pulse, which the surgeon, on applying his fingers to her wrist, pronounced to be the case. He ordered his patient to be undrest; which was accordingly done, the landlady accommodating her with a bedgown of her own; and then, having mulled a little wine, he mixed in it some powders of his own composition, a secret, he said, of the greatest efficacy in re-adjusting any disorders in the nervous system; of which draught he recommended a large teacupful to be taken immediately. Harriet objected strongly against these powders, till the surgeon seemed to grow angry at her refusal, and recapitulated, in a very rapid manner, the success which their administration had, in many great families who did him the honour of employing him. Harriet, the gentleness of whose nature could offend no one living, overcame her reluctance, and swallowed the dose that was offered her.

The indignation of my soul has, with difficulty, submitted so long to this cool description of a scene of the most exquisite villainy. The genuineness of my tale needs not the aid of surprise, to interest the feelings of my readers. It is with horror I tell them, that the various incidents, which this and the preceding chapter contain, were but the prelude of a design formed by Sindall for the destruction of that innocence, which was the dowry of Annesly's daughter. He had contrived a route the most proper for the success of his machinations, which the ignorance of Ryland was prevailed on to follow; he had bribed a set of banditti to execute that sham rape, which his seeming valour was to prevent; he had scratched his wrist with a penknife, to make the appearance of being wounded in the cause; he had trained his victim to the house of a wretch, whom he had before employed in purposes of a similar kind; he had dressed one of his own creatures to personate a surgeon, and that surgeon, by his directions, had administered certain powders, of which the damnable effects were to assist the execution of his villainy.

Beset with toils like these, his helpless prey was, alas! too much in his power to have any chance of escape; and that guilty night completed the ruin of her, whom, but the day before, the friend of Sindall, in the anguish of his soul, had recommended to his care and protection.

Let me close this chapter on the monstrous deed!-That such things are, is a thought distressful to humanity-their detail can gratify no mind that deserves to be gratified.

CHAP. XXIV.

The situation of Harriet, and the conduct of Sindall. They proceed homeward. Some incidents in their journey.

I WOULD describe, if I could, the anguish which the recollection of the succeeding day brought on the mind of Harriet Annesly. But it is in such passages that the expression of the writer will do little justice even to his own feelings; much must therefore be left to those of the reader.

The poignancy of her own distress was doubled by the idea of her father's; a father's, whose pride, whose comfort, but a few weeks ago she had been, to whom she was now to return deprived of that innocence which could never be restored. I should rather say that honour; for guilt it could not be called, under the circumstances into which she had been betrayed: but the world has little distinction to make; and the fall of her, whom the deepest villainy has circumvented, it brands with that common degree of infamy, which, in its justice, it always imputes to the side of the less crimi nal partv.

Sindall's pity (for we will do him no injustice) might be touched; his passion was but little abated; and he employed the language of both to comfort the affliction he had caused. From the violence of what, by the perversion of words, is termed love, he excused the guilt of his past conduct, and protested his readiness to wipe it away by the future. He begged that Harriet would not suffer her delicacy to make her unhappy under the sense of their connec tion; he vowed that he considered her as his wife, and that, as soon as particular circumstances would allow him, he would make her what the world called so, though the sacredness of his attachment was above being increased by any form whatever.

There was something in the mind of Harriet which allowed her little ease under all these protestations of regard; but they took off the edge of her present affliction, and she heard them, if not with a warmth of hope, at least with an alleviation of despair.

They now set out on their return to the peaceful mansion of Annesly. How blissful, in any other circumstances, had Harriet imagined the sight of a father, whom she now trembled to behold!

They had not proceeded many miles when they were met by Ryland, attended by a number of rustics, whom he had assembled for the purpose of searching after Miss Annesly. It was only indeed by the lower class that the account he gave had been credited, for which those who did not believe it cannot much be blamed,

when we consider its improbability, and likewise that Jack's persuasive powers were not of a sort that easily induces persuasion, even when not disarranged by the confusion and fright of such an adventure.

His joy at finding Harriet safe in the protection of Sir Thomas, was equally turbulent with his former fears for her welfare. After rewarding his present associates with the greatest part of the money in his pocket, he proceeded, in a manner not the most distinct, to give an account of what befel himself subsequent to that violence which had torn him from his companion. The chaise, he said, into which he was forced, drove, by several cross roads, about three or four miles from the place where they were first attacked; it then stopping, his attendant commanded him to get out, and, pointing to a farm-house, which by the light of the moon was discernible at some distance, told him, that, if he went thither, he would find accommodation for the night, and might pursue his journey with safety in the morning.

He now demanded, in his turn, a recital from Harriet of her share of their common calamity, which she gave him in the few words the present state of her spirits could afford. When she had ended, Ryland fell on his knees, in gratitude to Sir Thomas for her deliverance. Harriet turned on Sindall a look infinitely expressive, and it was followed by a starting tear.

They now proceeded to the next stage on their way homeward; Sindall declaring, that, after what had happened, he would on no account leave Miss Annesly, till he had delivered her safe into the hands of her father. She heard this speech with a sigh so deep, that if Ryland had possessed much penetration, he would have made conjectures of something uncommon on her mind: but he was guiltless of imputing to others, what his honesty never experienced in himself. Sir Thomas observed it better, and gently chid it by squeezing her hand in his.

At the inn where they first stopped, they met with a gentleman, who made the addition of a fourth person to their party; being an officer who was going down to the same part of the country on recruiting orders, and happened to be a particular acquaintance of Sir Thomas Sindall: his name was Camplin.

He afforded to their society an ingredient, of which at present it seemed to stand pretty much in need; to wit, a proper share of mirth and humour, for which nature seemed, by a profusion of animal spirits, to have very well fitted him. She had not, perhaps, bestowed on him much sterling wit; but she had given him abundance of that counterfeit assurance, which frequently passes more current than the real. In this company, to which chance had associated him, he had an additional advantage from the presence of Ryland, whom he very soon

discovered to be of that order of men called butts, those easy cushions (to borrow a metaphor of Otway's) on whom the wits of the world repose and fatten.

Besides all this, he had a fund of conversation arising from the adventures of a life, which, according to his own account, he had passed equally in the perils of war and the luxuries of peace; his memoirs affording repeated instances of his valour in dangers of the field, his address in the society of the great, and his gallantry in connections with the fair.

But lest the reader should imagine, that the real portraiture of this gentleman was to be found in those lineaments which he drew of himself, I will take the liberty candidly, though briefly, to communicate some particulars relating to his quality, his situation, and his cha

racter.

He was the son of a man who called himself an attorney, in a village adjoining to Sir Thomas Sindall's estate. His father, Sir William, with whom I made my readers a little acquainted in the beginning of my story, had found this same lawyer useful in carrying on some proceedings against his poor neighbours, which the delicacy of more established practitioners in the law might possibly have boggled at; and he had grown into consequence with the Baronet, from that pliancy of disposition which was suited to his service. Not that Sir William was naturally cruel or oppressive; but he had an exalted idea of the consequence which a great estate confers on its possessor, which was ir ritated beyond measure when any favourite scheme of his was opposed by a man of little fortune, however just or proper his reasons for opposition might be; and, though a good sort of man, as I have before observed, his vengeance was implacable.

Young Camplin, who was nearly of an age with Master Tommy Sindall, was frequently at Sir William's in quality of a dependant companion to his son; and, before the Baronet died, he had procured him an ensign's commission in a regiment, which some years after was stationed in one of our garrisons abroad, where Camplin, much against his inclination, was under a necessity of joining it.

Here he happened to to have an opportunity of obliging the chief in command, by certain little offices, which, though not strictly honourable in themselves, are sanctified by the favour and countenance of many honourable men; and so much did they attach his commander to the ensign, that the latter was very soon promoted by his interest to the rank of a lieutenant, and not long after was enabled to make a very advantageous purchase of a company.

With this patron also he returned to England, and was received at all times in a very familiar manner into his house; where he had the honour of carving good dishes, which he was

sometimes permitted to taste; of laughing at jokes, which he was sometimes allowed to make; and carried an obsequious face into all companies, who were not treated with such extraordinary respect as to preclude his approach.

About this time his father, whose business in the country had not increased since the death of Sir William Sindall, had settled in London, where the reader will recollect the having met with him in a former chapter; but the captain, during his patron's residence there, lived too near St James's to make many visits to Gray's Inn; and after that gentleman left the town, he continued to move amidst a circle of men of fashion, with whom he contrived to live in a manner which has been often defined by the expression of, "nobody knows how:" which sort of life he had followed uninterruptedly without ever joining his regiment, till he was now obliged, by the change of a colonel, to take some of the duty in his turn, and was ordered a recruiting, as I have taken due occasion to relate.

In this company did Harriet return to her father. As the news of disaster is commonly speedy in its course, the good man had already been confusedly informed of the attack which had been made on his daughter. To him, therefore, this meeting was so joyful, as almost to blot from his remembrance the calamities which had lately befallen his family. But far different were the sensations of Harriet: she shrunk from the sight of a parent, of whose purity she now conceived herself unworthy, and fell blushing on his neck, which she bathed with a profusion of tears. This he imagined to proceed from her sensibility of those woes which her unhappy brother had suffered; and he forbore to take notice of her distress, any otherwise than by maintaining a degree of cheerfulness himself, much above what the feelings of his heart could warrant.

He was attended, when her fellow-travellers accompanied Miss Annesly to his house, by a gentleman, whom he now introduced to her by the name of Rawlinson; saying he was a very worthy friend of his, who had lately returned from abroad. Harriet indeed recollected to have heard her father mention such a one in their conversations before. Though a good deal younger than Annesly, he had been a very intimate school-fellow of his in London, from which place he was sent to the East Indies, and returned, as was common in those days, with some thousand pounds, and a good conscience, to his native country. A genuine plainness of manners, and a warm benevolence of heart, neither the refinements of life, nor the subtleties of traffic, had been able to weaken in Rawlinson; and he set out, under the impression of both, immediately after his arrival in England, to visit a companion, whose virtues he remenbered with veneration, and the value of whose

friendship he had not forgotten. Annesly received him with that welcome which his fireside ever afforded to the worthy; and Harriet, through the dimness of her grief, smiled on the friend of her father.

CHAP. XXV.

Something farther of Mr Rawlinson.

RAWLINSON found his reception so agreeable, that he lengthened his visit much beyond the limits which he at first intended it; and the earnest request of Annesly, to whom his friend's company was equally pleasing, extended them still a little farther.

During this period, he had daily opportunities of observing the amiable dispositions of Harriet. He observed, indeed, a degree of melancholy about her, which seemed extraordinary in one of her age; but he was satisfied to account for it, from the relation, which her father had given him, of the situation of his son, and that remarkable tenderness of which his daughter was susceptible. When viewed in this light, it added to the good opinion which he already entertained of her.

His esteem for Miss Annesly shewed itself by every mark of attention, which a regard for the other sex unavoidably prompts in ours; and a young woman, or her father, who had no more penetration in those matters than is common to many, would not have hesitated to pronounce, that Rawlinson was already the lover of Harriet. But as neither she nor her father had any wishes pointing that way, which had been one great index for discovery, they were void of any suspicion of his intentions, till he declared them to Annesly himself.

He did this with an openness and sincerity conformable to the whole of his character. He told his friend, that he had now made such a fortune as enabled him to live independently, and that he looked for a companion to participate it, whose good sense would improve what were worthy, and whose good-nature would bear what were imperfect in him. He had discovered, he said, so much of both in the mind of Miss Annesly, that there needed not the recommendation of being the daughter of his worthiest friend to determine his choice; and that, though he was not old enough to be insensible to beauty, yet he was wise enough to consider it as the least of her good qualities. He added, that he made this application to her father, not to ask a partial exertion of his interest in his favour, but only, as the common friend of both, to reveal his intentions to Miss Harriet. "She has seen me," said he, " as I am; if not a romantic lover, I shall not be a different sort of being, should she accept of me for a husband; if she does not, I promise you,

I shall be far from being offended, and will always endeavour to retain her for my friend, whom I have no right to blame for not choosing to be my wife."

Annesly communicated this proposal to his daughter, with a fairness, worthy of that with which it had been entrusted to him: "I come not," said he, " my Harriet, as a despot to command, not as a father to persuade, but merely as the friend of Mr Rawlinson, to disclose his sentiments; that you should judge for yourself, in a matter of the highest importance to you, is the voice of reason and of nature; I blush for those parents who have thought otherwise. I would not even, with a view to this particular case, obtrude my advice; in general you have heard my opinion before, that the violence which we have been accustomed to apply to love, is not always necessary towards happiness in marriage; at the same time, that it is a treason of the highest kind in a woman to take him for her husband, whom a decent affection has not placed in that situation, whence alone she should choose one. But my Harriet has not merely been taught sentiments; I know she has learned the art of forming them; and here she shall be trusted entirely to her own.”

The feelings of Harriet on this proposal, and the manner in which her father communicated it, were of so tender a kind, that she could not restrain her tears. There wanted, indeed, but little to induce her to confess all that had passed with Sindall, and throw herself on the clemency of her indulgent parent. Had she practised this sincerity, which is the last virtue we should ever part with, how happy had it been! But it required a degree of fortitude, as well as softness, to make this discovery; besides, that her seducer had, with the tenderest entreaties, and assurances of a speedy reparation of her injuries, prevailed on her to give him something like a promise of secrecy.

Her answer to this offer of Mr Rawlinson's expressed her sense of the obligation she lay under to him, and to her father; she avowed an esteem for his character equal to its excellence, but that it amounted not to that tender regard which she must feel for the man whom she could think of making her husband.

Rawlinson received his friend's account of this determination without discomposure. He said he knew himself well enough to believe, that Miss Annesly had made an honest and a proper declaration; and begged to have an interview with herself, to shew her that he conceived not the smallest resentment at her refusal, which, on the contrary, though it destroyed his hopes, had increased his veneration for her."

"Regard me not," said he to her when they met, "with that aspect of distance, as if you had offended or affronted me; let me not lose that look of kindness, which, as the friend of your father and yourself, I have formerly ex

perienced. I confess there is one disparity between us, which we elderly men are apt to forget, but which I take no offence at being put in mind of. It is more than probable, that I shall never be married at all. Since I am not a match for you, Miss Annesly, I would endeavour to make you somewhat better, if it is possible, for another; do me the favour to accept of this paper, and let it speak for me, that I would contribute to your happiness, without the selfish consideration of its being made one with my own." So saying, he bowed, and retired into an adjoining apartment, where his friend was seated. Harriet, upon opening the paper, found it to contain bank-bills to the amount of a thousand pounds. Her surprise at this instance of generosity held her, for a few moments, fixed to the spot; but she no sooner recollected herself, than she followed Mr Rawlinson, and putting the paper, with its contents, into his hand,-"Though I feel, sir," said she," with the utmost gratitude, those sentiments of kindness and generosity you have expressed towards me, you will excuse me, I hope, from receiving this mark of them." Rawlinson's countenance betrayed some indications of displeasure." You do wrong," said he, 66 young lady, and will be judged by your father. This was a present, sir, I intended for the worthiest woman; the daughter of my worthiest friend; she is woman still, I see, and her pride will, no more than her affections, submit itself to my happiness." Annesly looked upon the bank-bills: "There is a delicacy, my best friend," said he, "in our situation; the poor must ever be cautious, and there is a certain degree of pride which is their safest virtue." "Let me tell you," interrupted the other, "this is not the pride of virtue. It is that fantastic nicety which is a weakness in the soul, and the dignity of great minds is above it. Believe me, the churlishness which cannot oblige, is little more selfish, though in a different mode, than the haughtiness which will not be obliged."

"We are instructed, my child," said Annesly, delivering her the paper; "let us shew Mr Rawlinson, that we have not that narrowness of mind which he has censured; and that we will pay that last tribute to his worth, which the receiving of a favour bestows."

"Indeed, sir," said Harriet, " I little deserve it; I am not, I am not what he thinks me. I am not worthy of his regard.”—And she burst into tears.-They knew not why she wept; but their eyes shed each a sympathetic drop, without asking their reason's leave.

Mr Rawlinson speedily set out for London, where his presence was necessary towards dispatching some business he had left unfinished, after his return to England.

He left his friend, and his friend's amiable daughter, with a tender regret; while they,

who, in their humble walk of life, had few to whom that title would belong, felt his absence with an equal emotion. He promised, however, at his departure, to make them another visit with the return of the spring.

CHAP. XXVI.

Captain Camplin is again introduced.-The situation of Miss Annesly, with that Gentleman's concern in her affairs.

His place was but ill supplied, at their winter's fire-side, by the occasional visits of Camplin, whom Sindall had introduced to Annesly's acquaintance. Yet, though his was a character on which Annesly could not bestow much of his esteem, it had some good-humoured qualities, which did not fail to entertain and amuse him. But the captain seemed to be less agreeable in that quarter, to which he principally pointed his attention, to wit, the opinion of Harriet, to whom he took frequent occasion to make those speeches, which have just enough of folly in them to acquire the name of compliments, and sometimes even ventured to turn them in so particular a manner, as if he wished to have them understood to mean somewhat more.

The situation of the unfortunate Harriet was such as his pleasantry could not divert, and his attachment could only disgust. As she had lost that peace of mind which inward satisfaction alone can bestow, so she felt the calamity doubled, by that obligation to secrecy she was under, and the difficulty which her present condition (for she was now with child) made such a concealment be attended with. Often had she determined to reveal, either to her father, or to Mrs Wistanly, who, of her own sex, was her only friend, the story of her dishonour; but Sindall, by repeated solicitations when in the country, and a constant correspondence when in town, conjured her to be silent some little time, till he could smooth the way for bestowing his hand on the only woman whom he had ever sincerely loved. One principal reason for his postponing their union, had always been the necessity for endeavouring to gain over the assent of his grandfather by the mother's side, from whom Sindall had great expectations; he had, from time to time, suggested this as difficult, and only to be attempted with caution, from the proud and touchy disposition of the old gentleman: he now represented him as in a very declining state of health; and that, probably, in a very short time, his death would remove this obstacle to the warmest wish of a heart, that was ever faithful to his Harriet. The flattering language of his letters could not arrest the progress of that time, which must divulge the shame of her he had undone; but they soothed the tu