ad drawn was prophetic. It
described what Mr. Tyrrel chiefly feared; and what in its commencements
he thought he already felt. It was responsive to the whispering of his
own meditations; it simply gave body and voice to the spectre that
haunted him, and to the terrors of which he was an hourly prey.

By and by, however, he recovered. The more he had been temporarily
confounded, the fiercer was his resentment when he came to himself. Such
hatred never existed in a human bosom without marking its progress with
violence and death. Mr. Tyrrel, however, felt no inclination to have
recourse to personal defiance. He was the furthest in the world from a
coward; but his genius sunk before the genius of Falkland. He left his
vengeance to the disposal of circumstances. He was secure that his
animosity would never be forgotten nor diminished by the interposition
of any time or events. Vengeance was his nightly dream, and the
uppermost of his waking thoughts.

Mr. Falkland had departed from this conference with a confirmed
disapprobation of the conduct of his neighbour, and an unalterable
resolution to do every thing in his power to relieve the distresses of
Hawkins. But he was too late. When he arrived, he found the house
already evacuated by its master. The family was removed nobody knew
whither; Hawkins had absconded, and, what was still more extraordinary,
the boy Hawkins had escaped on the very same day from the county gaol.
The enquiries Mr. Falkland set on foot after them were fruitless; no
traces could be found of the catastrophe of these unhappy people. That
catastrophe I shall shortly have occasion to relate, and it will be
found pregnant with horror, beyond what the blackest misanthropy could
readily have suggested.

I go on with my tale. I go on to relate those incidents in which my own
fate was so mysteriously involved. I lift the curtain, and bring forward
the last act of the tragedy.

CHAPTER X.

It may easily be supposed, that the ill temper cherished by Mr. Tyrrel
in his contention with Hawkins, and the increasing animosity between him
and Mr. Falkland, added to the impatience with which he thought of the
escape of Emily.

Mr. Tyrrel heard with astonishment of the miscarriage of an expedient,
of the success of which he had not previously entertained the slightest
suspicion. He became frantic with vexation. Grimes had not dared to
signify the event of his expedition in person, and the footman whom he