and resignation to His will. Rest assured
His wise Providence works all things together
for good. The awful sentence which has been
passed upon me, and which I am now
summoned to answer, I confess is very just, and I
die in peace with all mankind, truly grateful for
the kindnesses I have received from Mr. Orridge,
and the religious instruction and consolation
from the Rev. Mr. Stocking, who has promised
to take my last words to you."

Subsequent disclosures prove this man to
have been a scoundrel, blood and bone, and his
victim's character not much better. Even
at school he had been notorious for stealing,
and had bought false keys, with which he could
open any boy's trunk he wished to ransack. He
confessed to a forgery on a bank, and it was
generally supposed he had murdered a child
that he, Maria, and the stepmother secretly
buried. Whether the deaths of his father and
brother were to be attributed in any way to
his cruel agency, was never investigated. There
can be no doubt he died a liar, for he
obstinately persisted he had never used a sword.
This was, no doubt, in order to try and prove
that the murder was not premeditated, and only
the result of a sudden quarrel. The fool forgot
that he had been seen snapping his pistol in
Marten's cottage the morning of the murder.

The excitement! of the crime did not cease
with the execution. Melodramas were written
upon it, and the Red Barn itself was all but
pulled to pieces by curiosity-mongers from
London. Phrenologists, rejoicing in a triumph
of their young science, announced pompously to
the scientific world that in Corder's skull
"secretiveness, destructiveness, and
philoprogenitiveness were inordinately developed."

MABEL'S PROGRESS.

By THE AUTHOR OF "AUNT MARGARET'S TROUBLE.'

CHAPTER VI. HIDING.

IN a miserable bedroom of a miserable tavern
in a squalid street on the Surrey side of the
river sat two young men. On the dirty table
before them was placed a muddy decanter half
full of coarse brown brandy, tumblers, and a
jug of water. They had been smoking, and the
chamber was filled with heavy clouds of tobacco,
which hung about the frouzy curtains of the
bed, and made the already close atmosphere
almost insupportably stifling. But, notwithstanding,
the one window was closed, and the
yellow blind partly drawn down. Of the two
occupants of the room, one — a young man with
a remarkably handsome dark face — was well
and even elegantly dressed; the other, with
unbrushed clothes, matted hair, red eyes, and
pallid cheeks, appeared the very picture of
reckless despondency. He sat with his head
bent down and his folded arms resting on the
table before him, whilst his companion, leaning
back in his chair in an easy nonchalant attitude,
darted a glance at him, from time to time, of
mingled impatience and a sort of contemptuous
pity. Presently, as the other continued mute
and motionless, the handsome young man uttered
a sharp ejaculation, and turning irritably in his
chair, said, " Well, upon my soul, I do think
you're the most ungrateful chap I ever encountered
in the whole course of my life!"

The other looked up at him for an instant,
and then dropped his eyes again, with a gloomy
knitting of the brows.

"Ungrateful, am I?" he muttered; and, after
a minute's pause, added, with a short bitter
laugh, " Ungrateful! yes, I'm so surprisingly
happy and fortunate, that it is wonderful I'm
not grateful. Grateful! who have I got to be
grateful to, I should like to know?"

"To me," retorted his companion, coolly.
"You are ungrateful to me. What you are to
anybody else is not my business."

This time the pale young man fixed his eyes
upon the other, and kept them steadily bent on
him, as he repeated with an elaborate show
of profound astonishment, " Ungrateful to
you?"

The black malignant frown that came over
the face of the handsome youth changed its
beauty with startling suddenness. He struck
his hand — a supple hand with long slender
fingers — sharply on the table, and said, with
an indescribable coarse insolence of manner,
"To me? yes; to me. Don't try to come
any of your stuck-up airs over me, Mr. Walter
Charlewood. It won't do. You and I know
each other from old times. Why, who is it
that's providing you with food and shelter at
this moment?"

"You lent me a trifling sum that I asked
for, I don't deny it. But you've had fifty
times as much from me before now."

"You have a pretty good cheek, my friend,
to talk in that manner. It runs in your family,
I suppose. How stands the case? Long ago
—or, at least, it seems long ago, now, so much
has happened since then — and when you had
never known what it was to want a pound,
whilst I had practical experience now and
then of wanting a dinner, chance brought you
in my way, or brought me in your way, if you
like that better.  You and your friends thought
yourselves very high and mighty personages, no
doubt, and looked down upon the poor devil of
a fiddler from a great elevation."

"Was I ever arrogant? Did I ever show
that I looked down upon you?"

"You were the best of the lot, or I shouldn't
be sitting here now; but there were other
members of your family who — ah! never mind that
just now. Your particular pal, Arthur Skidley,
ned to be saucy to me; but I cured him of
that, I fancy. You played billiards. I played
better, and told you so, fairly. Skidley's set
had flattered you up for their own purposes  —
don't interrupt, I know what I'm saying — and
you didn't believe me. The consequence was,
that you got into my debt for a pretty
considerable sum of money."