of that injured man, and turn it to forgiveness;
for all things are in Thy power,  and it
is Thy doctrine, and Thy law." Thus ran his
words in the inward tears of his soul, and to
every sentiment of love and blessed
retribution, his ": Amen! Amen! " went up like
the flames of a heart on fire.

What then had taken place between these
men?  But two years ago, Longmore was a
wealthy wool merchant of Boston. He had
led a pleasant and jolly life.  His business
had grown immensely. His premises  were
large, his connections both at home and
abroad extensive, and such was his reputation
for integrity and capital that he commanded
the market over a vast district.   He was
a tall, large, florid man, of a peculiarly open
and cordial character.  He was liberal in his
ideas, and the leading man in the politics and
social movements of his neighbourhood.  His
family consisted only of his wife, a quiet
pleasant woman, and a fair, blue-eyed girl,
his daughter.  He kept a noble table, and
delighted to have his friends about him.  At
that time he thought friends as plenty as
blackberries, and laughed at the croakings of
those moral philosophers who had for ages
promulgated a different idea.  He dubbed
them book-worms, and said they did not know
life.  When he went round the country to
buy up the farmers' wool, his progress was
a regular course of feasting and merriment.
They all knew of his coming and assembled
their neighbours for a blithe evening.  Thus
Longmore made his annual rounds, despatching
an extraordinary amount of business amid
the overflowing hospitalities of farm-houses,
granges, and halls.

His doctrine of the prolific growth of friendship,
spite of the libellous calculations of
bookworms, received a grand confirmation when he
was about five-and-forty, in the bequest of a
fine estate in Northamptonshire.  It was the
result of an acquaintance accidentally made
abroad; it owed everything to friendship,
nothing to consanguinity.  From that time,
till a few years turned fifty, Longmore had
chiefly resided on this estate.  It was a
beautiful place. The house stood in a fine country
and a fine park.  His business was conducted
by an old faithful servant.  It seemed as if
Fortune was resolved that Longmore should
go down to his grave in his very charitable
views of human nature.

But, about three years before the time
we saw Longmore at his Christmas morning
devotions, the scene changed.  There
sprung up a man, a butcher of
Gainsborough, who claimed to be the true heir
to the Northamptonshire estate; and, after
some faint rumours, which rose and died
away again, Mr. Longmore was astonished,
and a good deal disconcerted, by the receipt
of a letter from an eminent solicitor of
Wainfleet, calling upon him, in the the name of his
client, Mr Filmer, to restore to him the estate
of his late relative, Mr. Jon Churton.

Mr. Longmore, who , with all his pleasant
and sunny humour, was a peculiarly sensitive
and impulsive man, read this letter, uttered
his indignation in no gentle terms, and knowing
that he derived his claim from his friend
Churton's honest will,  made in his most florid
health, bade the lawyer do his worst.

That worst was done.  We will not travel
minutely through all those years of angry
exasperations.  Mr. Longmore's character was
high; that of his adversary, Filmer, just the
reverse.  We may, therefore, imagine
Longmore's astonishment when the active lawyer,
Broadhurst of Wainfleet, asserted through
the ablest counsel, that Longmore had taken
advantage of the decayed intellects of the late
Mr. Churton to concoct a will to his own
advantage. We may imagine how this
astonishment rose when the housekeeper of Mr.
Churton, whom Longmore had himself
rendered independent by voluntarily doubling
the annuity left her by her master, was
brought forward to attest the weakness of the
testator's faculties, and that Longmore had
carefully excluded from the sick bed of Mr.
Churton every one but his own family, and
that the dying man had been upheld by
brandy to enable him to put his signature to
the deed.

So well had Broadhurst laid his mine, that
Longmore found himself blown, as it were, at
once into the air.  So well had the pleader
described the wrong done to the poor and
oppressed heir, whom he painted as a most
deserving person, and so astounding was the
evidence of the housekeeper, that a verdict
was at once given in favour of the plaintiff.
Longmore was at first struck dumb and senseless
as by a stupefying shock; but the
impetuosity of his temper, which, during the
long, smooth course of his life, had only
manifested itself in generous and hasty outbursts
of feeling, now very soon assumed the fury of
a tornado. His indignation against what he
termed and deemed the villainy of the lawyer,
and the black ingratitude of the housekeeper
was too tremendous to find its way out
at once,  but it came by degrees into action that
seemed resolved to tear down everything
between him and his vengeance on the plotters
against him.  He rushed into the contest with
a vehemence which alarmed his family and
friends, and gave the most decided advantage
to his watchful opponents.  Trial after trial
came off, the most eminent counsel were
retained at the most stupendous cost, and for
some time public opinion was pretty equally
divided on the merits of the case.  But before
the next year was at an end, Longmore beheld
with inexpressible amazement, and with
feelings of indescribable irritation, his enemies
rapidly turning the scale against him, his
friends growing mysteriously cool, and his
capital exhausted by the gigantic contest.
At the end of that period he found himself
standing alone, regarded as the convicted
usurper of another's rights, and his former