Brancher in great distress. She either would
not, or could not, tell me anything about her
husband's reason for removing. I went the
next day and arranged the sale for her. The sale
took place. She came to wish us good-by, and
left.

We heard no more of the Branchers for two
months. One day, when I came from the City,
Lucy ran to meet me, with a large letter in her
hand. It was closed with a great black seal
bearing a coat of arms, of which a palm-tree
was the most conspicuous feature.

"O, do see what it is, Arthur!" cried Lucy;
"I'm sure it is poor Mr. Brancher's writing."

I had never told Lucy the story of what had
happened to me at the Doncaster Hotel.

I stood leaning on my garden-gate, as I
opened the letter, and read it alone. It ran
thus:

          Lancaster Castle, Nov. 13, 1853.

My dear Gregson,—I dare say you little
expected ever to see my handwriting again
after our unpleasant rencontre at Doncaster. I
write to you, because I know you to be a good,
kind-hearted fellow, who once had a regard for
me. Fortune has been hard upon me, though
not perhaps harder than I have deserved, for to
tell you the plain truth, old boy, I am, and
always was, a consummate scoundrel; but even
scoundrels are, I suppose, sometimes to be
pitied, and then, my poor wife and children! I
cannot tell you more now, but I beg you to
come and see me before I leave England (this
is a delicate way of telling you that I am safe to
be transported for life). I do not ask you for
my own sake, but for the sake of poor Lizzy and
the children, to whom you may be of use in a
way you are not aware of. Kindest remembrance
to Mrs. Gregson.

        Believe me to be, yours most truly,

                HENRY FITZOSMOND BRANCHER.

Lucy was paralysed with astonishment at this
strange letter, at once so reckless and so
regretful. Her curiosity was especially excited
by those words of the letter so mysterious to
her—"unpleasant rencontre."

"What does he mean, Arthur?" she asked,
with that cross-examining air not, perhaps,
quite unknown to my married readers. But for
once I was inflexible. I positively refused to
tell her until I should return from Lancaster.

Next day, at five o'clock, I stepped out of a
railway carriage on the platform of the Lancaster
station. Driving first to the hotel to deposit
my carpet-bag (for I meant to sleep in Lancaster),
I got into the fly again, and told the driver
to set me down at the prison gate.

As I stood waiting at the door until an under
turnkey had run to take in my card to the
governor, a lady dressed in black, and followed
by two children, with faces hidden and bitterly
sobbing, drove from the door. I was sure it
was Mrs. Brancher and her children.

When the turnkey, in his cold imperturbable
manner, unlocked the third door down the second
corridor, and flung it wide open in a careless
mechanical way, I found Brancher sitting on
his pallet, humming "I remember, I remember,"
with much nonchalance. He was as florid in
manner as ever. He wore a short tail coat of
prison grey, and trousers, one leg pepper and
salt, and the other canary colour.

"No style about the clothes," he said to me
ruefully, stretching out his yellow leg. "How
do you do, Gregson? Glad to see you, old fellow;
sorry I cannot offer you better hospitality; will
for the deed."

The turnkey left us, and I sat down on the
bed near Brancher, who assumed an
autobiographical manner, and waved a black-edged
envelope in his hand as he spoke.

"My dear boy," said he, "when I told you I
was once a judge in India, I reserved the
important fact that I was driven from my
judgment-seat on an absurd charge of corruption.
The man who drove me from it, however, I should
not forget to say, was a greater thief than myself,
and only hated me because I was his rival. I
returned to England almost penniless, and declared
war against the richer part of mankind,
especially hotel-keepers. I determined to live on
rich fools, and never to starve while they had a
crust. I had first tried to be honest, tried lecturer,
wine merchant, coal merchant, auctioneer,
house agent, but failed in all. Tempted in the
hour of need, I joined a gang of swindlers, and
soon became comparatively rich. We worked
grand combinations of fraud, and divided the
spoil."

As he made this unblushing confession,
Brancher kept rolling a small pill, about the colour
and size of the seed of a sweet-pea, between his
finger and thumb.

"Holloway?" said I, glancing at the pill inquisitively.

"No," said he, smiling. "O no; not Holloway.
A far better pill. It cures everything
—stitches, ague, gout, cramp, brain, stomach,
everything. But, as I was saying, our gang
prospered. At last we got too daring, and I
was caught. But there was one disagreeable
condition entailed on all those who entered our
confederacy, and who should fall into the hands
of the Philistines. That condition I have been
unpleasantly reminded of this morning by the
letter I now hold in my hand."

"And this condition?" said I.

"I cannot tell you. Take this letter, I have
resealed, open it to-morrow when you get up,
you will then see, and can act accordingly. But
enough of that. Why I asked you to come was
this. I shall soon have to start for a distant
country;—transported, in fact. I do not want
to leave poor Lizzy and the children beggars. I
have some money which I wish you to take care
of and manage for them."

"Money!" I said, incredulous. "A prisoner
with money?"

"Yes," said he; "a prisoner with money.
Do you think an old thief has not two tricks for
every one that the thief-taker has? Look."

He stooped down, and taking off his heavy
soled shoe, picked out one of the sparrowbill