nequeo, etc.; but
quotations are odious). And some hidden power was working in the case of
Mrs. Hayes, and, for its own awful purposes, lending her its aid.

Who has not felt how he works--the dreadful conquering Spirit of
Ill? Who cannot see, in the circle of his own society, the fated and
foredoomed to woe and evil? Some call the doctrine of destiny a dark
creed; but, for me, I would fain try and think it a consolatory one. It
is better, with all one's sins upon one's head, to deem oneself in
the hands of Fate, than to think--with our fierce passions and weak
repentances; with our resolves so loud, so vain, so ludicrously,
despicably weak and frail; with our dim, wavering, wretched conceits
about virtue, and our irresistible propensity to wrong,--that we are the
workers of our future sorrow or happiness. If we depend on our strength,
what is it against mighty circumstance? If we look to ourselves, what
hope have we? Look back at the whole of your life, and see how Fate has
mastered you and it. Think of your disappointments and your successes.
Has YOUR striving influenced one or the other? A fit of indigestion puts
itself between you and honours and reputation; an apple plops on your
nose and makes you a world's wonder and glory; a fit of poverty makes a
rascal of you, who were, and are still, an honest man; clubs, trumps,
or six lucky mains at dice, make an honest man for life of you, who ever
were, will be, and are a rascal. Who sends the illness? who causes the
apple to fall? who deprives you of your worldly goods? or who shuffles
the cards, and brings trumps, honour, virtue, and prosperity back again?
You call it chance; ay, and so it is chance that when the floor
gives way, and the rope stretches tight, the poor wretch before St.
Sepulchre's clock dies. Only with us, clear-sighted mortals as we are,
we can't SEE the rope by which we hang, and know not when or how the
drop may fall.

But revenons a nos moutons: let us return to that sweet lamb Master
Thomas, and the milk-white ewe Mrs. Cat. Seven years had passed away,
and she began to think that she should very much like to see her child
once more. It was written that she should; and you shall hear how, soon
after, without any great exertions of hers, back he came to her.

In the month of July, in the year 1715, there came down a road about
ten miles from the city of Worcester, two gentlemen; not mounted,
Templar-like, upon one horse, but having a horse between