ord bless her! So the fellow stopped, and I bustled through the gate,
and got home. But la, miss, if we are all robbed and murdered?"

Alice had not heard much of this harangue; but what she did hear very
slightly affected her strong, peasant-born nerves; not half so much
indeed, as the noise Mrs. Jones made in double-locking all the doors,
and barring, as well as a peg and a rusty inch of chain would allow, all
the windows--which operation occupied at least an hour and a half.

All at last was still. Mrs. Jones had gone to bed--in the arms of
sleep she had forgotten her terrors--and Alice had crept up-stairs, and
undressed, and said her prayers, and wept a little; and, with the tears
yet moist upon her dark eyelashes, had glided into dreams of Ernest.
Midnight was passed--the stroke of one sounded unheard from the clock
at the foot of the stars. The moon was gone--a slow, drizzling rain was
falling upon the flowers, and cloud and darkness gathered fast and thick
around the sky.

About this time, a low, regular, grating sound commenced at the thin
shutters of the sitting-room below, preceded by a very faint noise,
like the tinkling of small fragments of glass on the gravel without. At
length it ceased, and the cautious and partial gleam of a lanthorn fell
along the floor; another moment, and two men stood in the room.

"Hush, Jack!" whispered one: "hang out the glim, and let's look about
us."

The dark-lanthorn, now fairly unmuffled, presented to the gaze of the
robbers nothing that could gratify their cupidity.

Books and music, chairs, tables, carpet, and fire-irons, though valuable
enough in a house-agent's inventory, are worthless to the eyes of a
housebreaker. They muttered a mutual curse.

"Jack," said the former speaker, "we must make a dash at the spoons
and forks, and then hey for the money. The old girl had thirty shiners,
besides flimsies."

The accomplice nodded consent; the lanthorn was again partially shaded,
and with noiseless and stealthy steps the men quitted the apartment.
Several minutes elapsed, when Alice was awakened from her slumber by a
loud scream she started, all was again silent: she must have dreamt it:
her little heart beat violently at first, but gradually regained its
tenor. She rose, however, and the kindness of her nature being more
susceptible than her fear, she imagined Mrs. Jones might be ill--she
would go to her. With this idea she began partially dressing herself,
when she