make a lady of you after all. What if I were to let you take a trip
with me to France, old girl, eh? and let you set off that handsome face,
for you are devilish handsome, and that's the truth of it, with some of
the French gewgaws you women love. What if. I were? would you be a good
girl, eh?"

"I think I would, Dick,--I think I would," replied the woman, showing
a set of teeth as white as ivory, with pleasure partly at the flattery,
partly at the proposition: "you are a good fellow, Dick, that you are."

"Humph!" said Houseman, whose hard, shrewd mind was not easily cajoled,
"but what's that paper in your bosom, Bess? a love-letter, I'll swear."

"'Tis to you then; came to you this morning, only somehow or other, I
forgot to give it you till now!"

"Ha! a letter to me?" said Houseman, seizing the epistle in question.
"Hem! the Knaresbro' postmark--my mother-in-law's crabbed hand, too!
what can the old crone want?"

He opened the letter, and hastily scanning its contents, started up.

"Mercy, mercy!" cried he, "my child is ill, dying. I may never see her
again,--my only child,--the only thing that loves me,--that does not
loath me as a villain!"

"Heyday, Dicky!" said the woman, clinging to him, "don't take on so, who
so fond of you as me?--what's a brat like that!"

"Curse on you, hag!" exclaimed Houseman, dashing her to the ground with
a rude brutality, "you love me! Pah! My child,--my little Jane,--my
pretty Jane,--my merry Jane,--my innocent Jane--I will seek her
instantly--instantly; what's money? what's ease,--if--if--" And the
father, wretch, ruffian as he was, stung to the core of that last
redeeming feeling of his dissolute nature, struck his breast with his
clenched hand, and rushed from the room--from the house.

CHAPTER VII.

MADELINE, HER HOPES.--A MILD AUTUMN CHARACTERISED.
--A LANDSCAPE.--A RETURN.

'Tis late, and cold--stir up the fire,
Sit close, and draw the table nigher;
Be merry and drink wine that's old,
A hearty medicine 'gainst a cold,
Welcome--welcome shall fly round!
--Beaumont and Fletcher: Song in the Lover's Progress.

As when the Great Poet,--

Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detained
In that obscure sojourn; while, in his flight
Through utter and through middle darkness borne,
He sang of chaos, and eternal night:--

As when, revisiting the "Holy L