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branches of the oaks, and beeches, and elms that surrounded the large old garden, and grew in clumps on the fine plot of grass that swept away from the walls of the house. Within the room the glow of the wood fire that burned in the yawning stove of bygone days, threw a red light on the oak wainscoted walls, and on the tall chairs, covered with tapestry, and on the dusky oil paintings; but the fairest picture of all, was that of the young girl, who sat musing alone in that still, quiet chamber, where there was no sound, save the crackling and hissing of the half-burnt logs, and, at times, a deep-drawn sigh from Rose Berrington's lips. She was a tall, slender girl, with chesnut hair and dark blue eyes, and was tastefully dressed in a rose-coloured négligé, with green ribbons, and a pretty lace apron.

Fifteen years since she went, as a baby child, to live with Peggy's cousins. The good farmer and his wife did not enjoy so much of the society of their little charge as they would have liked, for she was often up at the Great House with her mother. And then, Mrs. Metham, always an invalid, or with real or fancied ailments, liked to hear her childish prattle, which seemed to divert her, and would have her mother give her her lessons in her room, being diverted with her cleverness and sharpness. As she grew up Mrs. Metham would pay for masters for her; and so Rose became an accomplished girl. When her mother died, she lived with the Metham's for some time; in fact, till she went to keep house for her brother in Winchester.

Rose had been thrown much into the society of Basil Metham, and before she left his father's house she felt what a strong hold this man had upon her young heart. She had struggled long to overcome this love, for many circumstances combined to tell her that an union with Basil could never be a happy one. As years passed on, his vices seemed to take deeper root; yet she could not drive him from her heart. The canker in the bud of her early and ill-placed love had spread too far. Lovely in face and person, with an intelligent and gifted mind, and of singularly good and amiable disposition, it seemed a strange caprice of the human mind that should make her fix her affections on Basil Metham—a man whose personal beauty even was fast passing away, under the combined influences of strong unbridled passions, drinking, hard living, and every intemperance. Religion, the little he had ever possessed, had been replaced by the worst doctrines of the diabolical school of French infidelity, founded by Voltaire. His speech became daily more bitter and cynical, his manners harsher and more repelling. He was broken down in fortune and reputation. Few but predicted a sad end for Basil Metham.

Rose was disturbed in her melancholy musings by the sudden

opening of the door, and the abrupt entrance of Basil himself. How changed since the day when Humphrey first met him in the Presbytery of St. Peter's! He was now a tall finely-made man, of lofty stature and a commanding appearance. Manly beauty he possessed in a high degree; but his wild life was stamping out its traces, and ageing him before his time. His eyes were sunken and bloodshot; his once clear olive complexion sallow, and his face haggard and worn.

In his dress he followed the most extravagant fashion of the times. He wore a cut velvet coat, very ample in the skirts, of a cinnamon brown colour, lined with pink satin, and covered with embroidery, and a long lapelled waistcoat of cloth of silver, likewise embroidered with gold. He had fine lace ruffles at his wrist, cut steel buckles on his shoes and at the knees of his breeches, and the sword by his side had a handle of cut steel inlaid with gold. In his hand he carried a small three-cornered cocked hat, bound with gold lace, a species of head-dress which the beaux of that period called a Nivernois hat. His fine black hair was elegantly crisped, trimmed, and powdered.

"Your housekeeper, cook, Abigail, or whatever functionary she is, told me you were in here, Rose," said Basil, flinging himself into a chair and throwing his hat on another, "so I walked in. uninvited; but it was not you I came to see either-it was Humphrey. I do not often have now the felicity of seeing him, so I am obliged to intrude into his orbit when I wish for that satisfaction."

"I think the fault is yours, Basil," replied Rose, sadly; "you know, it is always a pleasure for Humphrey to see you."

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"Was," answered Basil; but," he continued, in a sneering tone, which added to the cruelty of the allusion, "Richard forgets his friends, now that he is enthroned in the Bank, and poor Buckingham, the scurvy dog-that is, unhappy I-he has no longer need of. Circumstances alter things strangely."

"Things alter strangely, indeed," said Rose, hastily, "when Basil Metham makes a jest of the sad deformity of one whom he once loved and esteemed."

"I esteem him now," replied Basil, bitterly; "but I almost hate him sometimes for his superior goodness. And he has wronged me too, saint as he is."

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'Humphrey has never wronged you by word or deed," replied Rose, warmly.

"He has," exclaimed Basil, almost savagely. "First he deprives me of my father's affections, and then of yours. I never loved a woman save yourself, Rose, nor ever shall. There has never been any engagement between us, and the world possibly knows

nothing of our love; but he does-your brother, I mean-and he has poisoned you against me. You might be my beacon light, Rose, my guiding star! With you I might be saved-without you I shall perish."

"Alas, no!" said Rose, clasping her hands together; "I should but imperil my own soul, Basil, and not help to save yours. Your good resolutions are written upon sand. You resolve to amend one hour, and the next, with your boon companions, you scoff and ridicule the absurd idea."

"Enough, Rose; don't let's have a repetition of your brother's laboured and sanctimonious perorations," said Basil, in an irritated tone; "but go and find him out, my girl. I have no time to loseI am going up to London to-night.

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Rose hastily left the room, and Basil remained gazing with a vacant stare at the red embers in the grate, while a sullen, forbidding look stole over his dark, haggard face, which deepened, as the door, opening, admitted Humphrey Berrington.

"This is an unlooked-for pleasure," said the latter, as he advanced into the room; and as he took Basil's hand in his, he added, "We seldom meet now."

"The seldomer the better," replied Basil, curtly. "My visits can't be pleasant to you. When do the rich like the visits of the poor?" he added, sneeringly; " and I only come to beg. That last announcement makes you draw back into your shell, like a snail when he is touched!" and Basil ended his speech with a derisive laugh.

Humphrey Berrington had, indeed, made a slight motion of surprise when he heard what was the purport of Basil's visit. He, however, gave no direct answer to his taunt, but said, as he seated himself at a few paces distance from Metham

“I did not think, Basil, that, after your father's last large donation, you should so soon expect a fresh supply. You know his firm determination not to assist you again if you continue your present ruinous course of life. The largest resources would soon be exhausted with such a drain upon them. Think a little-it is but one week since your father gave you £500."

"'Twas gone in one day," replied Basil, carelessly. "Why, man, I owed a debt of honour of £300, and then Lord Derby's Laburnum, beat the horse, and others, I had bet on, on our racecourse, and won by four heats, and I lost £200 there. So, you see, how my father's last gift went; and now I am out at elbows again. After all, he has no right to grumble; his own bringing up of me is in fault. As the tree grows so it will fall. He did not bend the branches when they were tender and supple, and 'tis of no use-he cannot bend them now."

Humphrey gave something like a groan, for these last words were truly spoken, and he felt that perhaps with a judicious training the broken-down, ruined spendthrift and gamester before him might have turned out a blessing to society instead of a curse.

"I am but my father's son," resumed Basil, continuing his train of argument," and I suffered in two ways-by bad example, and by over indulgence."

"The latter fault you should not reproach your father with," interposed Humphrey; "for it arose from the excess of his affection for you."

"His affection was my bane, then!" replied Basil, savagely. "Let us go back to my early life. What was my training: is it any wonder I am what I am? His foolish doting was such that he could not bear me out of his sight, and that deprived me even of the advantages I should have gained by being sent out to school, I was put to an academy near our house. You know it, and you know what sort of an education I received; and the master was a man who knew nothing of what he professed to teach, but taught through his ushers; and, by a grave appearance, imposed on the fools, his patrons, and made them think him a very learned man. The result of the years I spent there was a great proficiency in dancing, riding, and fencing, but I left the school as ignorant of all other sciences, I believe, as when I entered it."

"Other boys have had an equally unsatisfactory training, and have not turned out as you have done, Basil," said the Hunchback, sorrowfully. "Do not speak so harshly of the father who has only loved you too well."

"Then, when I had passed my boyhood," continued Basil, without heeding what Berrington had said; "he paved the way for my ruin. He made no point of my entering the Bank-he made me a large allowance, and gave me to understand that I was my own master."

"'Twas ill judged, ill judged," sighed Humphrey.

"He has sown the whirlwind, he must reap the storm," said Basil, bitterly. "But I, hardened as you think me, Humphrey," he added in a softer tone, "I have had, and have, my better There are times when I wish, from my soul, I could throw off the chains that bind me-when I wish-oh! how I wish! I could call back the days of my early childhood, and repeat again the little prayers I said then at my mother's knee, with such earnestness and pathos, before infidelity had tinged the pure waters of my devotion, and turned them into a foul and muddy stream. I wish I could believe again; but I can no more do that than I can return to the days of my happy and innocent childhood."

"Ah, Basil, friend of my boyhood," said Humphrey, his eyes

filling with tears, as he spoke, "could you but resolve, once and for all, to throw off these chains that fetter you, what another man you would be! Happiness is within your reach, if you would but grasp it. The cup of your guilty pleasures has bitterness mingled with the sweetness of its draught, and in its dregs are often ruin and death. By reforming your life, Basil, you might have years of happiness before you, and the hope of a bright hereafter."

"No more of this," exclaimed Metham, hastily interrupting Humphrey, "or I shall forget who I am, forget what a millstone is about my neck, and make you promises that I never can keep. As I have lived, so, most likely, I shall die. And now, after this curious digression, we will return to the real subject of my visit to you to-night. I want some more money, and some more I must have, by fair means or foul. I am getting desperate, Humphrey. I can't go and rot in jail. No, I would be a knight of the road first indeed, I don't quite know what other more likely profession is open to me to dig I am not able, to beg-well, to be sure, I must stop my quotation from Scripture, because I am begging to-night. Humphrey I'll come to the point now-I want £200."

The Hunchback looked sad and troubled.

"Basil," he said, "I will not mind sharing my last guinea with you, when I could call it honestly my own; but to lend or give that which does not belong to me, on the chance of being able to replace it, is robbery, and can be called by no other name."

"The cashier of Metham's (bank, who is shortly to become a partner," answered Basil, in a sneering tone, "is indeed in bad case when he cannot find £200! But," he added, in a louder tone, "you are trifling with me and insulting me, Humphrey Berrington! You have the power to aid me if you would-you who are at the head of all my father's concerns. I am left a beggar, while you are feathering your nest."

"You little know me, Basil, if your believe what you say," said the cashier, sorrowfully; "if I were to die to-night, my poor sister would be as destitute as she was when she went, as a little child, to live near the Great House, and when you first knew her. I shall die a poor man, whenever my hour may come. And whatever you may say, in your present mood, Basil, I believe that in your heart you assent to the truth of what I have said."

Metham had seemed deeply touched by Humphrey's allusion to Rose. When he ceased speaking, Basil hastily rose from his seat, and making one or two rapid strides towards him, he seized both his hands and clasped them, almost fiercely, in his own, while his bloodshot eyes seemed moistened by tears.

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Humphrey," he said, "I often think I am possessed by some evil spirit, which expels from my heart all that is good, and leaves

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