ll for you if he had. I
married him, and then commenced my days of sorrow and--of guilt. He
squandered my money at the gambling-table, and I was sometimes in rags
and without food. He was drunk half the time, and abused me; but I was
even with him there, and gave him as good as he gave me. He taught me to
drink, and such a time as we sometimes made together would have made
Satan blush. I thought I was low enough; but he drove me lower yet. He
put temptation in my way--he did, curse his black heart! though he
denied it. I fell as low as woman can fall, and then I suppose you think
he left me? Well, he did, for a time; he went off somewhere, and perhaps
it was then he was trying to ruin some other girl, as foolish as I had
been. But he came back, and got money from me--the wages of my sin. And
all the while, he was as handsome, and could talk as softly as if he was
a saint. And with that smooth tongue and handsome face he won another
bride, and married her--married her, I tell you; and that's why I can
send him to the State prison."

"Send him! Who? My God! what do you mean?" cried Miranda, rising slowly
from her chair, with clasped hands and ashen cheeks.

"Philip Searle, my husband!" shouted Moll, rising also, and standing
with gleaming eyes before the trembling girl.

Miranda sank slowly back into her seat, tearless, but shuddering as
with an ague fit. Only from her lips, with a moaning sound, a murmur
came:

"No, no, no! oh, no!"

"May God strike me dead this instant, if it is not true!" said Moll,
sadly; for she felt for the poor girl's, distress.

Miranda rose, her hands pressed tightly against her heart, and moved
toward the door with tottering and uncertain steps, like one who
suffocates and seeks fresh air. Then her white lips were stained with
purple; a red stream gushed from her mouth and dyed the vestment on her
bosom; and ere Moll could reach her, she had sunk, with an agonizing
sob, upon the floor.

CHAPTER XVII.

The night after the unhappy circumstance we have related, in the
bar-room of a Broadway hotel, in New York city, a colonel of volunteers,
moustached and uniformed, and evidently in a very unmilitary condition
of unsteadiness, was entertaining a group of convivial acquaintances,
with bacchanalian exercises and martian gossip.

He had already, with a month's experience at the seat of war, culled the
glories of unfought fields, and was therefore an object of admiration to
his civil