possible, pronounce a blessing on us both.-At least," added he, after a pause, followed by a deep groan," at least it will rest on her, though it should recoil from me.- "2

"And why should it not rest on you also ?" said the clergyman. "This anxiety to do even so small a portion of good betrays a lurking virtue, which may have once governed you with all its plenitude of strength, and which, though long subdued by evil habits, and years of intercourse with wicked companions, may again resume its power."

The prisoner fell back into his straw, and groaned deeply; whilst the clergyman approached the pallet, and sat down on the side of it. He took the feverish hand of the sufferer. His eye was sunk, and his look haggard, and his whole countenance strongly manifested the torture he felt.

My friend," said the good man, in a tone which of itself might have spoken peace-" tell me your story? I trust I have done much to compose the mind of your guilty, but contrite companion. Fear not, but I shall be able to make the living waters of comfort reach your

heart also. I am persuaded, that the roots of early sown virtue yet remain there, and that the plant only wants culture to be restored to its former state of active vegetation."

The prisoner again groaned deeply, and wept bitterly, until, at length, becoming more composed, he sat up among the straw, and resting his back against the wall, and leaning on one arm, he began, as it seemed, to recall events long since gone by.

"Indeed, it was not always thus with me," said he; "I am not now the man I was in my youth; even the name of Brandywyn I now bear, is not my own; 'tis but a nom de guerre assumed, to shield off the disgrace my conduct might have brought on a better. I was the son of a farmer in the north of England, a well-educated man of considerable wealth, and even possessing some influence in the district he lived in, acquired by his sound sense and sterling honesty. When I was about ten or twelve years old I had the misfortune to lose my mother, who was the daughter of a clergyman. But I remember her well even now, and I remember also the unwearied attention she bestowed on my early religious instruc

tion, and, if I could have profited by her lessons, they adhere to me even yet. I think even now I see her venerated form hanging over me as I knelt to say my evening prayer; and I shall never forget the day when the hearse bore her away, and I saw the grave close over her coffin for ever. She left only one other child, my brother Henry, then an infant. My father's affliction was so severe as to render him utterly unfit, for a tíme, to think of any thing but the bereavement he had suffered. When he began to feel himself able for exertion, he turned his whole attention to the education of me, his eldest boy; and, resolving to spare no expence that his means could afford, he re-let the farm he then possessed, and removed into the city of Durham, that he might the more certainly secure proper teachers for me. There he placed me at a day-school where I had every advantage, and he moreover took care that I should partake largely of his own private instructions and admonitions during those hours I spent under the paternal roof. Under so wise a system of education, it might have been expected that I should have turned out a reward to him. But, alas! it was far otherwise.

There

ff Having accidentally taken up with a number of idle and wicked boys, with some of whom, good deal older than myself, I naturally thought it manly to associate, and whose wicked tricks soon thought it a noble thing to imitate, I was led into two or three excesses not very creditable to me," but hardly worth mentioning now, and these, coup led with my total want of application to any honourable pursuit, gave my poor father the most cutting vexation. In vain he tried to make any lasting impression upon my thoughtless heart. were times, indeed, when his admonitions, together with the heart-rending agony I saw he suffered, melted me even to tears, and produced protestations he vainly hoped were the forerunners of se rious amendment. But I was no sooner met by those wicked associates, whose tool I had in a great measure become, than what they called the prosing of my over scrupulous parent, was laughed to scorn, and every trace of virtue produced by his lessons, was speedily effaced by the ridicule they threw on them.

"After four or five years spent in this way, during which I continued to make considerable progress in wickedness, a plan was formed for robbing

T

the fish-pond of one of the dignitaries of the church, and I joined in it with some relish, from the malicious thought, that our plunder was to deprive the overgrown Dean of the carp on which he was said to feast. But what I entered into very much as a frolic, produced consequences serious enough in themselves

"Having proceeded to the spot with my comrades, on a moonlight night, with a drag-net sufficiently large to enclose a considerable sweep of the fish-pond, we commenced our operations. As the pond was very deep in the middle, I and three other lads were employed in wading in, two grof us on each side, through the shallower part of

the water, those who were innermost being furnished with long poles to keep down the groundline, whilst two other lads on the shore, assisted in hauling the drag-lines to pull the net round towards the bank at one end. The eldest boy of all, the son of a butcher, who had planned the b expedition, and whose father was probably to have benefited most largely by the spoil, walked backwards and forwards on a little hillock near the pond, as a centinel. kat or beigums. I dade qu "Whilst things were in this posture, and we,