CHAPTER XVIII.

SITTING down before the mirror, which McGawyl had placed on the table, and looking on my own shadow (for the first time since that memorable day on which I had left Cushlane-Beg), I started back in a transport of sudden fear and astonishment. Not more lively was the amazement of the young prince in Hawkesworth's tale, who discovered upon his own shoulders the head and features of his rival, than was mine at the alteration which had taken place in my own appearance. My hair, a cluster of jet black close fitting curls, of which I was once not a little proud, and from which even in my latter days it was my custom to pluck with a jealous anxiety the silver warners of approaching age, was now a gray and grizzled mass, well suited in expression to the fierce and violent lineaments which it overshadowed. Those lineaments likewise had undergone a frightful change. It was not their distortion, in the mutilated mirror before me, that shocked my self-love; while I saw my nose, and mouth, and eyes, with the other features wrenched out of their proper collocation by the numerous cracks in the glass, and resembling the dissected map of a child, awkwardly put together by some blundering geographer. But they were in themselves rendered sufficiently hideous by the neglect and agitation of the preceding days. The cheeks and eyes were hollow, the forehead dry and yellow, deep lines were sunk around the mouth and between the brows, and the whole was so disguised in dust and mire, that it had not only a wild and ferocious, but a mean and vulgar air. I felt the blood mount up in my face when I recollected the unhandsome figure I must have made before the elegant stranger, and thought, in my own mind, that he was hardly to be blamed for declining to shake hands with me.

While McGawyl busied himself in procuring breakfast, I despatched a messenger to Dalton's house with the following note:

"Your good fortune preserved you from the fate you VOL. II.-11

merited at my hands last night-and Providence for some secret design, permits you still to prolong a life that you have made many unhappy wretches like me desire to abridge. I am satisfied. The violence which I employed towards you was unpremeditated, and I am rejoiced that it has not had a more serious termination. You have succeeded. I have

served your purposes. You have robbed me with impunity, and I have little hope now of regaining the property with which I was weak enough to intrust you. There I suffer our connexion to rest, for the present, and it is possible it may never again be renewed. But I have a farther warning to give you. Attempt not, as you value your safety, to carry into execution one of those diabolical schemes which I overheard you and your creatures project while I waited your leisure last night. Further than this, there is nothing which I feel myself obliged to do with respect to information obtained, as it was by a course unintentionally indirect. You are therefore still the guardian of your own bad secret, so long as you find it expedient to refrain from putting it into execution against the victims you had marked out. I am, &c.

ABEL TRACY."

I had concluded a breakfast on hot coffee and toast, with eggs "that were laid that morning," and made nearly all the necessary preparations for my departure, when my Mercury returned with Dalton's answer to my letter. It was cautiously worded, and evidently written in the anticipation of its meeting other eyes than those for which it was professedly intended. He affected an entire independence of the friendly or hostile disposition of a person so little governed by the accepted regulations of social intercourse as I was. I had thought proper to overhear private conversations, framed for specific purposes out of the emergency of the occasion, in which I could not discover how much was in accordance with the sincere opinions of the speaker, and how much was the result of a necessary policy. With respect to his own impressions of my conduct, I might consider inyself indebted to the domestic affliction which at present absorbed all his attention, for the impunity with which my violence was attended. My apology indeed (such was the term he applied to that passage of my note) ought to be

considered sufficient, according to the opinions of "the world," on such contingencies, but even if it had not been so readily and speedily made, he doubted whether he should feel himself authorized in seeking redress at the hands of one who was capable of so frantic a mode of retribution as I had thought proper to adopt. Without explanation given or received (although he could have amply satisfied me, had I heard him detail the motives of his conduct), I had rushed upon a course of practical recrimination for which he was but little prepared, as he supposed it to be a long time out of use in civilized life. That he took no farther measures at present to convince me of the little wisdom my conduct manifested, I might thank his boy, Henry Dalton, and with regard to those insinuations in my note, apparently intended to intimate that any part of his character was within my power, he should think it unnecessary to adopt any precaution whatever; he should consider it scarcely worth protecting, if it were liable to injury, from the malice of a baffled assassin.

For some moments after I had read the letter, I remained in doubt as to the course I was called on to pursue. My choler rose and swelled within my bosom at the daring insolence with which he received what I conceived a free and generous proposal. I knew enough of the man, however, to be convinced, that notwithstanding this fanfaronade of defiance, he would be careful to comply with all the stipulations contained in my letter, and as my principal object in writing (the safety of the people against whom the machinations were directed), would be thus accomplished, I had little difficulty in resolving to suspend all personal altercation for the present, and until my weightier interests should be adjusted. At all events, I determined not to expose his character until I had established my own circumstances in better security than that in which they stood at present, for assuredly I had a duty to discharge to my dependent family. It was this trimming between the wrong and the right, this serving of heaven under the guidance of Satan, this worshipping of virtue and of mammon, this facility of taking evil for good, and patching over the suggestions of selfish passion and covetousness with stolen fragments of right reason, that constituted the leading error of my conduct, and continually involved me in ruin, disgrace, and sorrow. There are many

in the world who thus frame to themselves a false conscience, and force themselves to believe that they are doing the will of the Almighty, when, as that great Being knows, they are doing nothing less.

CHAPTER XIX.

It was now so long since I had conversed with the fortunate Purtill, and his domestic economy had been at all times so entirely unknown to me, that I formed the design, contrary to my original intention, of dividing my journey, and spending the approaching night at the cottage of my adopted son-in-law. I had the less hesitation in resolving upon this project, as I soon became aware that my recovered strength was not sufficient to enable me to prosecute the whole journey without a stage of rest. My limbs were stiff and pained, and my joints snapped and creaked on the lightest motion, like hinges obstructed with rust.

Another purpose might be accomplished by a visit to the lucky mountaineer. I had heard and read much, and experienced more, of the changes in heart and mind, that are produced in men by a change of fortune, and (although it may appear to some that I slander myself in saying so), I secretly longed to prevent the news of his good fortune at Purtill's cottage, and ascertain the present state of his disposition: towards my daughter. So far had I now, by the force of wholesome reasoning, conquered my fatherly repugnance to this alliance, that I felt not a little anxious lest it might be prevented by any want of inclination on the part of the young gentleman himself. A timely visit would afford me the double opportunity of learning the condition of his mind, and of scattering in his ear such accidental words of encouragement as might arouse his long-surrendered hopes, and possibly entangle him in the difficulty of a proposal, which I would hold in deliberation until the announcement of his legacy had taken place.

But was I, indeed, capable of constructing and executing a scheme so full of meanness and base chicane as this? If I

had been charged with such a design, at the moment in which it was formed, I would have disclaimed it with some violent and perhaps practical demonstrations of indignation. And if I had asked my own heart what its motives were in making this visit, it would have answered with all the simple honesty in the world, that it was conscious of nothing more than a desire to see an old acquaintance, and to become more intimately known to an individual with whom it was probable I should soon be closely connected. But it would have lied, for all that, to itself and to me. The design above mentioned formed, almost unknown to myself, the motive on which I acted.

The ostler now brought to the door a horse which my landlord had borrowed from the village apothecary, and I rode off. McGawyl continued to watch me from the door in conjunction with several of the idle villagers, who were seated outside, on the sill-stones of their low windows, enjoying the warm sunshine of a summer noon, with their straw hats drawn low, so as to shade their eyes, (the only active parts of their frame at that lazy moment). I galloped rapidly away, and soon withdrew myself from their obser vation.

Considerable delay was occasioned while I lingered in the neighbourhood of the village, by certain professional habits in the apothecary's mare, which, however amusing they appear on recollection, were sufficiently annoying at the time they occurred, and prevented my arrival at the house of Purtill before the sun was in the west. All the doctor's patients who lived on the road-side, were to be visited before` the stubborn animal would listen to any proposition of leaving the neighbourhood. Accustomed as she was "from a filly up," as my landlord expressed it, to convey her master on a certain course of visitations, and convinced that I could not know better than he did what way she ought to travel, or perhaps supposing that I had similar reasons for inquiring after the health of her old acquaintances, she trotted up to the cabin doors one after another, nor could any remonstrances of whip or spur prevail on her to move a step forward until I had held some communion with the inmates. I discovered, moreover, another practice, sufficiently indica tory of her master's profession, which entertained me more, as it annoyed me less than those before mentioned. Her