high character only remembered to point the
public astonishment at the real baseness it
was supposed to have concealed.  His estate was
absolutely lost; he was called on to
refund long arrears of income, while the prodigal
expenditure in law had left him unable to
comply with these demands.  In proportion
to his former affluence, was now the rapacity
of his creditors. He saw himself gibbeted
in the Gazette, and the wreck of his property
torn to shreds in the hands of his legal
executioners.

What a Christmas Day was that which
passed soon after this extraordinary change
in his fortunes! Instead of the gaiety and
rich banqueting at Longmore Park, with
many friends around him, with laughter and
rejoicing beneath the large kissing-bush in
the servants' hall, and the brilliant dance in
the old saloon, the ruined and dejected
Longmore was occupying a poor house in a poor
street of his native town—  that town where he
had so long lived in honour and esteem. A
single maid servant waited at that melancholy
table, at which sate down, in gloomy silence,
Longmore, his wife, and daughter. His
numerous friends, where were they? Longmore
answered that question in his heart with a
dreary curse, his wife with a trembling frame,
and his daughter with a few silent tears.
The fallen man now confessed that the
philosophers, of all ages, were the truly wise
men; that he had been the fool. Experience
had set its seal afresh to the ancient
melancholy truth.

Between that wretched Christmas and
the one following, Longmore had been
employed in attempting to reconstruct a refuge
from absolute indigence, from the fragments
of his former trade. There had been but
one sole creature, out of his own house,
who had stood firmly by him, and believed
him still to be a just and cruelly-used man.
That was his widowed sister, Mrs. Ranford,
of Blant Farm, about fourteen miles from the
town. She had provided him a moderate
capital, and he commenced in small premises
— his former ample ones still stood empty—but
they were far too great for his present means,
labouring, as he did, under a ponderous
load of public prejudice, and under the still
more disqualifying  condition of his own mind.
For his whole intellectual tone was changed.
He looked on his fellow men as destitute of
truth and real virtue. He saw in them only
selfish and malignant dissemblers. His soul
was full of darkness and gall. He cared not
to live, but he submitted to it as a necessity.
His misfortunes had prostrated the never
strong frame of his wife, but the wreck of his
once manly, generous, and buoyant-hearted
disposition had prostrated it far more. His
daughter wept bitterly and daily over the
evidences of the frightful change which had
taken place in him. All those impulses which
had formerly been for good, were now
perverted into impulses of deadly wrath, and
deep contempt of his race. He plodded on in
his business with an unconquerable spirit, but
with indifferent success, for there was scarcely
a person with whom he had formerly dealt
who did not regard him as a justly fallen
man, and whom he did not regard as false
and heartless.

But already Providence was silently moving
round that great system of the universe which
brings truth invariably to the daylight.
When Longmore learned that the final
decision was given against him, he drove
away from Longmore Park, accompanied by
his wife, in precipitate haste.  He was too
proud to allow the emissaries of Broadhurst
to eject him from the spot like a homeless
dog. But Mary Longmore, the daughter,
staid behind, to pack up many little things
which she could not bear the idea of leaving
to the unhallowed hands of the butcher
Filmer. She had scarcely completed her
task, and sent off the packages, when she
appeared likely to encounter the occurrence
which her father had shrunk from. A
carriage drew up to the door, out of which she
saw a number of men issue, and one was
announced immediately as desiring to speak
with her. A young man, of handsome person,
and with a frank and gentlemanly air,
presented himself, respectfully apologising for
the cause which brought him there.

"You are Mr. Broadhurst's clerk?" said
Miss Longmore, somewhat astonished at the
young man's appearance and bearing.

"I am his son, Madam," he replied, again
bowing.

"I am sorry for it," replied Miss Longmore,
bearing up as bravely as she could against
her overpowering sensations. " I wish you
had an honester business here."

"Madam," replied the young man, with a
mixture of mildness, and yet of spirit, as
vindicating his father; "I am well aware how
this matter must appear to you, and deplore
it sincerely, but we believe our business to
be quite proper." He reminded her of the
decisive nature of the housekeeper's testimony,
and begged that they might no farther
pursue the painful subject.

Miss Longmore, with the tears starting into
her eyes, declared that God must one day
expose her awful perjury.

"It is quite natural you should think so,"
added the young man, feelingly.

"It is quite natural," replied Miss Longmore,
" because all the facts of the case have been
familiar to me from childhood. What should
there be so strange in a friend who owed his
life and fortune to my father, leaving that
fortune to him?"

"Life and fortune! " said the young man,
" What is that? Of that there was no
mention on the trial."

"There was mention," replied Miss Longmore,
"but the fact was borne down by
ridicule. If you wish to hear the truth, hear
it now, then. When my father was a very