out the writ"--it was impossible; but our minds
are so constituted--when we are guilty, we fear that others know what we
know. Now Gatty was particularly anxious she should not know about this
writ, for he had incurred the debt by acting against her advice.

Last year he commenced a picture in which was Durham Cathedral; his
mother bade him stay quietly at home, and paint the cathedral and its
banks from a print, "as any other painter would," observed she.

But this was not the lad's system; he spent five months on the spot, and
painted his picture, but he had to borrow sixty pounds to do this; the
condition of this loan was, that in six months he should either pay
eighty pounds, or finish and hand over a certain half-finished picture.

He did neither; his new subject thrust aside his old one, and he had
no money, ergo, his friend, a picture-dealer, who had found artists
slippery in money matters, followed him up sharp, as we see.

"There is nothing the matter, I hope, mother. What is it?"

"I'm tired, Charles." He brought her a seat; she sat down.

"I did not come from Newcastle, at my age, for nothing; you have formed
an improper acquaintance."

"I, who? Is it Jack Adams?"

"Worse than any Jack Adams!"

"Who can that be? Jenkyns, mother, because he does the same things as
Jack, and pretends to be religious."

"It is a female--a fishwife. Oh, my son!"

"Christie Johnstone an improper acquaintance," said he; "why! I was good
for nothing till I knew her; she has made me so good, mother; so steady,
so industrious; you will never have to find fault with me again."

"Nonsense--a woman that sells fish in the streets!"

"But you have not seen her. She is beautiful, her mind is not in fish;
her mind grasps the beautiful and the good--she is a companion for
princes! What am I that she wastes a thought or a ray of music on me?
Heaven bless her. She reads our best authors, and never forgets a word;
and she tells me beautiful stories--sometimes they make me cry, for her
voice is a music that goes straight to my heart."

"A woman that does not even wear the clothes of a lady."

"It is the only genuine costume in these islands not beneath a painter's
notice."

"Look at me, Charles; at your mother."

"Yes, mother," said he, nervously.

"You must part with her, or kill me."

He started from his seat and began to flutter up and down the room;
poor excitable creature. "Part with her!" cried he; "I shall never be a