eipt. It was only through the kindly chaplain
of the prison that Margaret was now and then advised of the well-being
of her husband.

Towards the close of that year the great O'Rourke himself did condescend
to write one letter. As this letter has never been printed, and as it is
the only specimen extant of Mr. O'Rourke's epistolary manner, we lay it
before the reader _verbatim et literatim_:--

_febuary. 1864 mi belovid wife
fur the luv of God sind mee pop gose the wezel.
yours till deth_
. _larry O rourke._

"Pop goes the Weasel" was sent to him, and Mr. Bilkins ingeniously
slipped into the same envelope "The Drunkard's Death" and "Beware of
the Bowl," two spirited compositions well calculated to exert a salutary
influence over a man imprisoned for life.

There is nothing in this earthly existence so uncertain as what seems
to be a certainty. To all appearances, the world outside of Moyamensing
Prison was forever a closed book to O'Rourke. But the Southern
Confederacy collapsed, the General Amnesty Proclamation was issued, cell
doors were thrown open; and one afternoon Mr. Larry O'Rourke, with
his head neatly shaved, walked into the Bilkins kitchen and frightened
Margaret nearly out of her skin.

Mr. O'Rourke's summing up of his case was characteristic: "I 've been
kilt in battle, hanged by the court-martial, put into the lock-up for
life, and here I am, bedad, not a ha'p'orth the worse for it."

None the worse for it, certainly, and none the better. By no stretch
of magical fiction can we make an angel of him. He is not at all the
material for an apotheosis. It was not for him to reform and settle
down, and become a respectable, oppressed tax-payer. His conduct in
Rivermouth, after his return, was a repetition of his old ways. Margaret
all but broke down under the tests to which he put her affections, and
came at last to wish that Larry had never got out of Moyamensing Prison.

If any change had taken place in Mr. O'Rourke, it showed itself in
occasional fits of sullenness towards Margaret. It was in one of these
moods that he slouched his hat over his brows, and told her she need not
wait dinner for him.

It will be a cold dinner, if Margaret has kept it waiting; for two years
have gone by since that day, and O'Rourke has not come home.

Possibly he is off on a whaling voyage; possibly the swift maelstrom has
dragged him down; perhaps he is lifti