o proud of that skill of
mine--too apt to plume myself upon it, above others whose gifts had
been less abundant. My error has been that of wiser and greater men,
who have been made to feel that what we cherish as the means of
obtaining earthly blessings, sometimes turns out a curse.'

To dissipate the gloom which hung over the whole party, and beguile
the half hour they intended to rest in that sweet spot, Mrs Sparks
drew out a Philadelphia newspaper which somebody had given her upon
the road, and called their attention to the deaths and marriages,
that they might see what changes were taking place in a city that
still interested them, though they were banished for ever from its
borders. She had hardly opened the paper when her eye glanced on an
article which she was too much excited to read. Amos, wondering at
the emotion displayed, gently disengaged the paper, and read: 'Bank
robber--Sparks not the man.' His own feelings were as powerfully
interested as those of his wife, but his nerves were stronger; and he
read out, to an audience whose ears devoured every syllable of the
glad tidings, an account of the conviction and execution of a wretch
in Albany, and who had confessed, among other daring and heinous
crimes, the robbery of the Philadelphia bank, accounting for the
disappearance of the property, and exonerating Sparks, whose face he
had never seen. These were tidings of great joy to the weary
wayfarers beneath the sycamore; their resolution to return to their
native city was formed at once, and before a week had passed, they
were slowly journeying to the capital of the State.

Meanwhile, an extraordinary revulsion of feeling had taken place at
Philadelphia. Newspapers and other periodicals which had formerly
been loud in condemnation of the locksmith, now blazoned abroad the
robber's confession--wondered how any man could have been for a
moment suspected upon such evidence as was adduced on the
trial--drew pictures of the domestic felicity once enjoyed by the
Sparkses, and then painted--partly from what was known of the
reality, and partly from imagination--their sufferings, privations,
and wrongs in the pilgrimage they had performed in fleeing from an
unjust but damnatory accusation. The whole city rang with the story.
Old friends and neighbours, who had been the first to shun them, now
became the loud and vehement partisans of the family. The whole city
was anxious to know where they were. Some reported that t