ELEVEN O'CLOCK.

Poor Belton!--Drawing on apace! Yet was he sensible when I went in--too
sensible, poor man! He has something upon his mind to reveal, he tells
me, that is the worst action of his life; worse than ever you or I knew
of him, he says. It must then be very bad!

He ordered every body out; but was seized with another convulsion-fit,
before he could reveal it; and in it he lies struggling between life and
death--but I'll go in again.

ONE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING.

All now must soon be over with him: Poor, poor fellow! He has given me
some hints of what he wanted to say; but all incoherent, interrupted by
dying hiccoughs and convulsions.

Bad enough it must be, Heaven knows, by what I can gather!--Alas!
Lovelace, I fear, I fear, he came too soon into his uncle's estate.

If a man were to live always, he might have some temptation to do base
things, in order to procure to himself, as it would then be, everlasting
ease, plenty, or affluence; but, for the sake of ten, twenty, thirty
years of poor life to be a villain--Can that be worth while? with a
conscience stinging him all the time too! And when he comes to wind up
all, such agonizing reflections upon his past guilt! All then appearing
as nothing! What he most valued, most disgustful! and not one thing to
think of, as the poor fellow says twenty and twenty times over, but what
is attended with anguish and reproach!--

To hear the poor man wish he had never been born!--To hear him pray to be
nothing after death! Good God! how shocking!

By his incoherent hints, I am afraid 'tis very bad with him. No pardon,
no mercy, he repeats, can lie for him!

I hope I shall make a proper use of this lesson. Laugh at me if thou
wilt; but never, never more, will I take the liberties I have taken; but
whenever I am tempted, will think of Belton's dying agonies, and what my
own may be.

***

THURSDAY, THREE IN THE MORNING.

He is now at the last gasp--rattles in the throat--has a new convulsion
every minute almost! What horror is he in! His eyes look like
breath-stained glass! They roll ghastly no more; are quite set; his face
distorted, and drawn out, by his sinking jaws, and erected staring
eyebrows, with his lengthened furrowed forehead, to double its usual
length, as it seems. It is not, it cannot be the face of Belton, thy
Belton, and my Belton, whom we have beheld with so much delight over the
social bottle, comparing notes, that one d