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"Injustice arises either from precipitation or indolence, or from a mixture of both; the rapid and the slow are seldom just; the unjust wait either not at all, or wait too long."-LAVATER.

IN glancing retrospectively at the past, the remark often hovers on the lip even of the most fortunate-" could the future have been guessed at-could I have surmised results-how differently should I have shaped my decisions; how carefully should I have guarded my conduct from misconstruction!"

"If,” said one,* now at rest, after a most useful and self-denying career-creed and deeds beautifully harmonizing-" if one had two lives; and were able by the second to correct the errors of the firstwhat revised and improved editions would appear of the opinions, conversation, and career of many a perplexing fellow-pilgrim!"

Some impression akin to this might have forced itself on the younger Roddam, as in after hours he mused over his disastrous visit to "The Griffin." Having fulfilled his errand he retraced his steps, and in doing so pulled heedlessly from his pocket a paper of returns which he was about to fill up and forward to the Main Office in Lombard Street. Waving this document carelessly in his hand, he passed in front of the bar. There sat the landlord superlatively sulky. Irritable was he to the last degree from the smart of his swollen and blistered thumb; half suffocated with rage at the successful trick of the "Commercials;" disgusted with the trials incident to a licensed victualler; savage at the anomaly of a jocular Quaker; and at war with all the world!

"You look too angry to be jested with, and too saucy to be reasoned with," thought the young man as he glanced at Wauchope: "I had best leave you as I find you-absorbed in your own agreeable speculations."

His exit was made quickly and in silence. A fatal error! Five words of explanation might have obviated a cloud of undeserved sus picion and years of mental agony.

In a few moments Higman returned from his round of visits to his customers; and uneasy about an expected remittance made instant inquiries for his letter. No party had seen it. No search could discover it. The "Commercial" was on his legs and at Roddam's * The late Miss D-by, of Prior Park, A.-de-la-Z.

VOL. XXVI.

B

in a few seconds. Roused by his continuous and no very gentle tappings at the office-window, the old postmaster became fevered by the Quaker's peremptory demand for "a letter already delivered." The son was hurriedly sought out.

"I myself laid the letter," was Jasper's calm statement, on Mr. Higman's writing-case at The Griffin. There it will be found." "Ay! when the Jews go home. I tell thee it's purloined! roared Broadbrim with greater vehemence than Quakers usually exhibit, save and except when the yellow metal is in jeopardy.

"I left it there much within the hour," persisted the younger party, with the self-possession which conscious innocence inspires. The bagman's questions became in an instant pressing and personal.

"Who was present when this took place?" "No one."

"Who occupied the room subsequently?"

"I cannot say: how should I?"

"Whom at the inn didst thou apprize where thou hadst placed my letter, and when?”

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"Didst thou ever part with this packet at all?" returned the Quaker, with a sneer: "it seems thou wast aware it contained enclosures of value. Bethink thee now, Jasper Roddam, are they not still about thee?"

It was not until this insulting inquiry grated on his ear that Roddam became aware of the peculiarity of his position, and of the perils which beset him.

His eye kindled and his colour rose as he replied, "Had you asked me that question on the green-sward instead of in my own dwelling, you should have been answered by deeds as well as words."

"Thou art fallible," said the Quaker, with vexatious calmness; "and thy memory, like that of another man, may at times play thee false."

"To-day, for the first time," said Jasper sturdily," have my honesty and veracity been questioned. To your face, I pronounce your insinuation false: and I repeat, once for all, the letter is at The Griffin.' I left it there."

"Thou wilt have to make that very clear to the London authorities; or "—, and the Quaker filled up the pause with a very significant gesture.

Jasper, with no doubtful intent, strode towards the speaker: but Broadbrim was a man of peace. Words were his only weapons:

and with anything but measured steps he whisked away.

But he was prompt and active.

He wrote to the Post-office officials; to his employers; to those correspondents who, he conceived, were likely to have made him a remittance; and to the lawyer of the firm which he represented.

A searching investigation was the result. The Surveyor of the Post-office came down. His first step was to suspend the elder Roddam his next to place the son under surveillance.

"Appearances," said he with manly candour, " are against you:

do your best to remove them. We trace this document into your possession; but you fail wholly and entirely to discharge yourself of its custody. You leave, as you assert, this letter in a public room. Of your doing so there is no witness. You pass the bar on quitting the house; but you never tell the landlord, who is sitting there, that you have discharged your errand, and have left this important letter behind you. He notices your departure; and observes distinctly that you have then in your hand a letter. You meet his statement by saying that it is one of the official returns you are bound to make monthly to the main office. But of this there is no proof. The public room in question is entered in less than ten minutes after you have left it; and no letter is to be found! What result can follow this train of suspicious circumstances but one for which you yourself must be fully prepared-the dismissal of your father from his office, and your apprehension on a charge of felony?"

The menaced blows fell in quick succession. The father was dismissed, and the son capitally indicted. But Jasper had a friend. Bohun aided him with his private counsel, professional services, and ready purse. Mainly attributable to him was this result that the grand jury threw out the bill. A second indictment was preferred with a similar issue: it was then intimated that no further step would for the present be adopted by the Post-office authorities. But to the younger Roddam it mattered little. The bolt had been already sped. From the hour of his father's dismissal and his own apprehension for theft he was a dying man. He never looked up again.

To witness that venerable form bent with sorrow, not with years -his vacant eye and furrowed brow-the air of settled dejection with which he crept slowly and sadly about, having no longer a definite occupation to interest and engage him-agonized his son.

"Oh! that I could have foreseen events"-was the burden of his oft-repeated self-reproach-" what precautions would I not have taken? As it is; for what have I not to answer? My ill-judged haste and unmeaning silence have brought disgrace on an old man's name; diminished his income; abridged his comforts; and will lay his grey hairs speedily in the dust."

Poor fellow! he himself preceded him to the tomb brought thither by a heart bowed, and riven, and broken! From that hour his mother who so far had borne up bravely, shewed symptoms of unsettled reason. Always mild and gentle in manner, her malady assumed no violent or offensive form, but she would search for hours, earnestly and anxiously, in her little dwelling for some object which she could never find. After an entire morning thus spent she would pause; and (the habitual piety of her mind prompting and colouring her train of thought,) would exclaim, "Yes! in God's good time-in His-in His-Wait and Hope-Wait and Hope!" And then would start up and renew her search as earnestly and seriously as before. And though she very rarely mentioned her son, and never spoke of him but as "happy," and though her memory was a total blank as to many important events,-still, as the week-day came round on which he died, she never failed, exactly at the hour at which he drew his last death, to offer up a prayer to God for the repose of his soul.

If she erred, and the destiny of the departed be, as we Protestants

hold, fixed and irreversible from the moment at which the spirit parts from its earthly prison-house, say would not the boundless compassion of the ALL-MERCIFUL obliterate all condemnatory record of a petition based on the quenchless and undying affection of a bereaved and mourning mother!

But the Roddams were not the only individuals whom the mischance connected with the missing letter materially affected. The employers of Mr. Obed Higman could never divest themselves of an impression, that with regard to that worthy there was something which they termed collusion. The head of the firm, a very elderly gentleman, who had "been in business a matter of fifty-five years and more, and could never call to mind a similar transaction," was peculiarly stolid and unpleasant upon the point. Had the Ho'sely boy enjoyed the pleasure of his acquaintance, he would have called him runty. Failing that epithet, Mr. Pannifer was pronounced "an impracticable personage: morbidly suspicious in all matters where receipts and vouchers to the last farthing were not forthcoming."

After many weeks of deep deliberation, the elder gentleman proposed to the firm the dismissal of their traveller-Higman. His colleagues readily assented; and the suspected man was briefly apprized by the senior partner that the firm had no further occasion for his very valuable services.

Obed Higman, the cool, was somewhat fevered by this announcement, and his looks avowed it.

"It is not our wish to inflict on you pecuniary inconvenience, and therefore a cheque for three months' salary awaits you in the counting-house; but to-day your connection with our house terminates." Obed ventured on a remonstrance.

"This decision," said he, "takes me by surprise: it is very sudden-"

"On the contrary, it has occupied my thoughts for weeks," returned the inflexible old merchant.

"It is connected, I am persuaded, with the missing remittance." Mr. Pannifer was silent. Though he held that in a multitude of counsellors there is safety, as fully was he persuaded that in a multitude of words there is peril.

The "Commercial" resumed.

"I never received that letter. I never handled its contents: the notes it contained were never in my possession-never-either at 'The Griffin' or elsewhere."

"I should hope not for your own sake," said the other, with emphasis; "for in that case your stay in this country would necessarily be brief."

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Why dost thou treat me as guilty?" exclaimed the Quaker. "Thou hast no proof of my misdoing! Payment of the missing notes is stopped in Threadneedle Street. They have never been presented there! Perchance they are destroyed: and of that, evidence may ere long be given thee."

"People are not given to destroy bank-notes, unless they happen to be either fools or madmen," returned the merchant, quietly. "Three notes for fifty each,-a five,-and a two,-make up an amount, sir-make up an amount-no-no-they are not destroyed: they are carefully housed by some knowing party."

"I protest most solemnly-" the Quaker began.

"I wish you well, sir," interrupted the senior partner, and waved him courteously towards the door.

"I protest in the most solemn manner-"

"The morning is fine: I have many engagements," and there was another courteous but intelligible motion of the wrinkled hand. "If it was my last word on earth-"

"Mr. Higman, your connexion with this firm has ceased. You are now an intruder; and I must desire you will withdraw." Obed obeyed. His commercial rounds were over. No other firm would adopt him. He was pronounced unsafe. The drab community declined all recognition of him as a Friend. He was not one of them. They knew him not. The distinction drawn between a thriving Quaker and a failing one is marvellously distinct and definite. Instinctively is it arrived at by that sagacious and moneyloving Fraternity.

The host and hostess of "The Griffin" were scarcely more fortunate. The "Commercials" in a body forsook the house. "They could not tolerate such irregular proceedings! They could not continue their patronage to an inn where corespondence was not respected, and where their letters were not safe. They were not going to peril the property of their employers! Not they! A disgraceful affair! As for the Griffin' it was doomed."

The remark was prophetic. Within a year Wauchope's bankruptcy was announced and—sale.

It seemed, however, doubtful which of the two would be first stranded on the rugged shore of poverty, Roddam or Wauchope. The old man's affairs, either from apathy or negligence, seemed inextricably involved; and he suddenly proposed to his creditors to surrender to them all he had, and exist on what their bounty might be pleased to spare him. Bohun heard of it and at once interposed. "Do nothing of the kind," said he. "Sell your little inheritance? No-no. Mortgage it! That were worse. What! Leave yourself in your old age at the mercy of a man or body of men! Pshaw! I'll assist you. Not that I'm a Rothschild. But I can help you. What sum do you require? You say you can't repay me? Well: and what then? I've a multitude of other clients troubled by no such scruples! You know my creed: 'never abandon a friend nor surrender a principle.' Stay where you are: watch events: and repose firmly on ONE who cannot mislead."

The old man gazed helplessly on his kind counsellor, but made no reply.

"Courage: 'tis always darkest just before break of day. Hope on: Hope ever."

"Hope? For what? Ah! if his memory could be but cleared! If what hangs over his name could be but set right! If he did but stand fair!”

"He does so before his God, that I firmly believe," returned Bohun, solemnly: "why not indulge the conviction that he may speedily do so before men?"

A few days subsequent to this conversation the sale at "The Griffin" took place. It commanded a large assemblage. The idle were there, who flock to a sale to pass away a vacant hour; and the spiteful, whose hearts expand during a close view of the miseries of others; and bargain-hunters, who brave dust, and heat, a reeking

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