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CHAPTER THE THIRTY-NINTH.-AN O'ER TRUE TALE.

"Blood hath been shed ere now i' the olden time
Ere human statute purged the general weal:
Ay! and since, too, murders have been performed
Too terrible for the ear."

MACBETH.

The following morning I breakfasted alone with my uncle-the host being absent, from a cause there was little difficulty in accounting for. At noon he appeared with an outward man which assured me my surmises were correct. In the course of an early stroll I learned that Madame de Beauplans had left Cheltenham on the previous night; a piece of information with which he was, clearly, also supplied, for he looked as a lover of three score and ten can look, with the prospect of a buxom widow of five-and-twenty being ravished from his arms. The presence of a septuagenarian Romeo in such a predicament was not calculated to dispel the unpleasant constraint which had grown out of the morning's meal. Subjects of a painful nature had been introduced, and treated by my mother with her usual violence; and she exhibited a spirit of entire selfishness that blighted in the bud the kindliness with which our fellowship of bereavement had begun to affect me towards her. The discussion of present plans forthwith commenced, and afforded, probably, the only specific that could have been devised by our several ill humours. It was set

tled that my uncle should return with his sister on the morrow to Brighton, where I promised to join them at Christmas, and, in the meanwhile, to accompany them as far as town. This scheme was duly put into execution as far as related to its last vision, and bidding adieu, for awhile, to my eccentric relatives, I once more found myself in London.

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It is quite bad enough to sit down to a cutlet at Long's, on a suicidal November night, in the forlorn hope that the other man in town may drop in to do his dinner also; but it is positive despair to be told that he left the day before for Melton, and to discover that you are the gentle gentleman of May Fair. This was, in the present instance, precisely my case; and therefore the most sublimely fastidious will probably make allowances for my having gone to Drury Lane to see the play. To all the confidence of seclusion, I took my place in the front row of the stage boxes, and lougnettes in my hand, surrendered myself to the cunning of the scene. It was presently obvious, however, that the grace of remaining perdu, like most other mortal hopes, was not likely to be fulfilled, of which certain glasses

directed against me from a private box on the opposite side of the house afforded assurance. Whoever the inmates might be, I speedily understood that they were as determined not to be seen as to see, the affair of observation being wholly carried on from cover of the curtains of their embrasure. At length during an interval between the acts, one of the party, a man enveloped in a cloak of rich furs, stood for a few moments forward; I scanned him minutely, and when he retired, felt convinced I had seen him before, but without being able to recall the occasion; I puzzled my brain about it-which was something gained, and then I began to fancy there was a mystery, or the like, connected with the stranger, and that was a great deal-excitement at such a season was a prodigious blessing. The party arose at the conclusion of the play; and I rose also, to see, at last, what the artillery corps might consist of. In a few minutes they approached the place where I stood, and passed hurriedly to their carriage-the unknown of the furs having Madame de Beauplans on one arm and Charlotte Gon the other.

An involuntary impulse caused me to evade their notice, but I followed them with my eyes, and as the door of the carriage closed I observed a wretched looking man rush towards it. What he said did not reach me, but the window was drawn up violently, and the applicant, whatever the nature of the request, took nothing by his attempt. The night was piercingly cold, and buttoning my coat around my throat, I prepared to make the best of the way for my fireside. As I strode rapidly across Covent Garden, the miserable looking man came up with me, and laying on my arm a hand which shook as with an ague, he said, "For God's sake, give me the means to procure food: I am perishing of hunger." The singularity of the appeal, as well as the consciousness that the speaker's voice was familiar, made me moderate my pace. "I know you," he continued, "and though I have little claim to your compassion, save me from the horrid death which is consuming me, and I may do you service." We had by this time reached the door of an obscure tavern in New Street. "If your necessity is so extreme," I said," you can get some kind of refreshment here," and I led him into a sort of coffee-room with a small fire smouldering in the grate, and a considerable smell of beer and tobacco. Like a famishing wolf, he threw himself upon such victuals as the place afforded; and I measured his squalid figure with astonishment at the feats it was performing, and curiosity as to the result of the adventure.

Having concluded his meal, or rather discontinued it because there was nothing more to eat, and washed it down with a desperate draught that drained a large pewter vessel to its dregs, he spake again

"Can you not remember me? Is all trace of my former self quite destroyed?"

"I do not-though I have certainly heard your voice before." "Well, I will delay making myself known till I have introduced another whom you likewise met to-night, that probably you may have also forgotten: did you know who the gentleman was that you watched enter a carriage with two ladies?"

"It struck me I had seen him before, but on what occasion I cannot call to mind."

"Then I will tell you that was Charles

; you will hardly have ceased to recollect the scene in which last you met him: that was Charles "said the beggar, his voice becoming hoarse and husky as he pronounced the name; "Charles I entreated him for alms to save me from starvation, and he answered me with a curse—which shall be repaid him, but not with words-not with words-not with words! Mr. Marston, you see I know you -leave me now-to-morrow, at this hour, meet me here, and I will tell you that as I have promised, which may serve you well. Leave me, also, a little money to purchase shelter from this bitter night, a luxury to which I have been a stranger longer than I could have wished or once anticipated. To-morrow, at this hour, you will see me again, if you will condescend to give rendezvous to a ragged wretch in a pot-house."

Despite the curiosity I felt to learn what my new acquaintance might have to communicate, it was by no means with much reluctance I tore myself from him, adopting his suggestion as to funds by depositing "some certain coins of silver" in his most naturally looking palm, at the same time hinting that it would be as well rather to turn them into a roosting place than into rum and water, if only for the sake of variety. Before the reader is brought again in contact with him, it is necessary that a sad incident of which I was a witness in early life should be related, as well to explain his allusions in the preceding conversation as to serve as an exposition of the strange story he subsequently revealed.

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The family of was one of the most ancient and wealthy in the county of L--. At the period when first my knowledge of it commenced, its representative was a youth of some sixteen or eighteen years, who, with an only brother, one year his junior, I met at the races of P. A noble fortune, increased by a long minority, made him an object of no small consideration, and he occupied a prominent position already in popular regard. I understood that he had lately arrived from one of the universities, whither he was to return, accompanied by his brother, whose ultimate destination was the temple; his bias leading him to the law as a profession. A few years passed, and when next I met the Squire of it was at cover side, as a master of fox-hounds, the barouche from which he descended being occupied by a young and lovely girl, the bride of a yet existing honeymoon. The state of man rarely exhibits one of such perfect promise as in the instance of that young bridegroom; fortune having first dowered him in her prodigality, sent him forth on his career, decked with every personal endowment, polished in manners and in mind, surrounded with troops of friends, and graced with as fair a helpmate as ever bloomed in her own land of witchery. Soon came the fruit worthy of such blossoms, and an infant heir was born to the broad lands of

About this time, the circle of

Hall was increased by a visit from the squire's brother, who had for a year or two been an inmate

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