hat good chance was to befriend her? There was an
angel watching over the steps of Mrs. Cat--not a good one, I think, but
one of those from that unnameable place, who have their many subjects
here on earth, and often are pleased to extricate them from worse
perplexities.

Mrs. Cat, now, had not committed murder, but as bad as murder; and as
she felt not the smallest repentance in her heart--as she had, in
the course of her life and connection with the Captain, performed and
gloried in a number of wicked coquetries, idlenesses, vanities, lies,
fits of anger, slanders, foul abuses, and what not--she was fairly bound
over to this dark angel whom we have alluded to; and he dealt with her,
and aided her, as one of his own children.

I do not mean to say that, in this strait, he appeared to her in the
likeness of a gentleman in black, and made her sign her name in blood
to a document conveying over to him her soul, in exchange for certain
conditions to be performed by him. Such diabolical bargains have always
appeared to me unworthy of the astute personage who is supposed to be
one of the parties to them; and who would scarcely be fool enough to pay
dearly for that which he can have in a few years for nothing. It is not,
then, to be supposed that a demon of darkness appeared to Mrs. Cat,
and led her into a flaming chariot harnessed by dragons, and careering
through air at the rate of a thousand leagues a minute. No such thing;
the vehicle that was sent to aid her was one of a much more vulgar
description.

The "Liverpool carryvan," then, which in the year 1706 used to perform
the journey between London and that place in ten days, left Birmingham
about an hour after Mrs. Catherine had quitted that town; and as she sat
weeping on a hillside, and plunged in bitter meditation, the lumbering,
jingling vehicle overtook her. The coachman was marching by the side of
his horses, and encouraging them to maintain their pace of two miles an
hour; the passengers had some of them left the vehicle, in order to
walk up the hill; and the carriage had arrived at the top of it, and,
meditating a brisk trot down the declivity, waited there until the
lagging passengers should arrive: when Jehu, casting a good-natured
glance upon Mrs. Catherine, asked the pretty maid whence she was come,
and whether she would like a ride in his carriage. To the latter of
which questions Mrs. Catherine replied truly yes; to the former, her
answer was that she ha