own excellent wisdom, foresight, and hard-
heartedness, in having laid down this distinction
so guardedly. She had promised her hand and
wealth to him who should trace her father's
murderer. To such a man alone——

Polly had exactly reached this satisfactory
conclusion, when she was interrupted by the
entrance of Stephen, who announced Sir James
Polhill—and, without further ceremony, ushered
in that excellent magistrate. He was attended
by Mr. Armour, still calmly confident, but
comporting himself with more real humility than on
former occasions.

"Are you prepared, my dear young lady," said
Sir James, taking Polly's hand with a meaning
smile, " for tidings of considerable importance?"

Polly coloured for all answer.

"Not to keep you in suspense, my dear,"
resumed Sir James, "you must know that we
have received the most satisfactory testimony of
the return to this country of the persons supposed
to be implicated in the — the affair of your poor
father. One of the most dashing, interesting,
and remarkable outrages of modern times, was
committed, two nights since, on the Harwich
road, within a few miles——My dear?"

Polly had uttered an unconscious exclamation.

"Go on, sir, I beg," faltered the young lady.

"The parties have been traced to their haunt,
and by this time to-morrow (we have to concert
measures with an officious country justice, who
has a fancy to be associated with this important
capture) Lord Lob will be in our hands! Eh,
Armour?"

"If he is not, Sir James, may I never take
thief again!" ejaculated the gentleman
addressed.

"Enough. I thought, my dear," continued
the magistrate, turning to Polly, "that you
would be glad to have this matter placed beyond
all doubt. And now, Armour, you can return to
the office. I will be with you in half an hour."

The officer withdrew. It did not, however,
appear that the excellent magistrate had
anything especial to add. Nor had he. This was
merely one of those little methods to which he
occasionally had recourse, byway of checking the
vanity of his subordinate, and teaching that
individual that, clever as he was, there were
depths of consultation into which not even he—
at least, as a matter of course—was privileged
to enter. Sir James therefore talked on, without
much significance, till receiving no reply, he
looked steadily at his companion, and saw that
she was both pale and agitated. His notice
brought matters to a crisis. The poor little girl,
overcome with mingled emotions, burst into a
violent flood of tears.

The good magistrate, somewhat alarmed, and
not a little puzzled, quickly discovered, however,
that there was something of a troubling nature
on her mind, irrespective of the agitating ideas
conjured up by the information he had brought,
and, touched by the poor child's friendless position,
set himself, with so much tact and gentleness,
to probe the wound, that he ended by
winning her confidence, so far as to become
possessed of the secret of her vow !

Let it be owned that Polly-my-Lamb was, in
her heart, not a little astonished at the collected
—not to say indifferent—manner in which Sir
James received the important revelation. His
lips struggled hard against a smile, and to say
truth, with difficulty overcame it, as the good
gentleman pictured to himself Henry the
Successful, accompanied by the fettered tyrant of
the highways, presenting himself at the footstool
of the heiress, and claiming the promised guerdon
of her hand and wealth!

Aware, however, of the serious light in which
Polly was prepared to view the matter, he
contented himself with hinting at the improbability
of Mr. Armour's coveting any other reward than
such as his conscience (and the government)
might bestow. To be plain, he assured her,
even if in her enthusiastic fulfilment of this
rather unadvised pledge, it should be needful to
inform the officer of the extraordinary preferment
thus likely to be placed within his reach,
he, Sir James, would venture to affirm, on the
part of that bold but respectful man, that he
would prefer accepting a reasonable composition
in money to aspiring to a station for which he was,
by birth, habits, and education, alike unfitted.

With this prompt analysis of the excellent
Armour poor Polly was fain to be content. The
glowing face of the young artist had died
hopelessly out of her future, but at least it would
never be replaced by the cool, supercilious visage
of this Bow-street runner. " This ! " Such was
not the term she would have applied, some few
months since, to one who seemed the appointed
instrument of vengeance. Poor Polly! Her
mind could not stir without a pang!

Sir James walked back to his office, absolutely
choking with hilarity. He was gifted — if gift it
be—with a keen sense of the ridiculous; and,
by the time he arrived in Bow-street, the joke,
as it appeared to him, had attained such colossal
proportions, that he found it impossible to refrain
from confiding it to the party most interested;
certain that the latter would enjoy it with equal,
though more subdued and respectful, relish.

Much to his surprise, Mr. Armour heard the
story out with a degree of gravity wholly
unsuited to the theme, and, almost before Sir
James had well concluded, the magisterial mind
became sensible of a painful suspicion that not
only was Mr. Henry Armour a vain, but also an
ambitious, man: that, in fact, in his view the
gigantic jest had diminished to a pigmy. Briefly
(in the plain English in which, undoubtedly, Mr.
Armour laid the case hastily before himself),
that he had as good a right to the lady's hand as
any other fellow, so that he fulfilled the conditions
required. The officer, however, did not
deem it advisable to give utterance to his feelings
at the moment; while Sir James, on his
side, was too anxiously intent upon bringing the
coming enterprise to a successful issue, to enter