higs;" bullying demanders
of your purse were "high Tories;" and thieving in gangs was "the effect
of the spirit of party." There was this difference between Augustus
Tomlinson and Long Ned,--Ned was the acting knave, Augustus the
reasoning one; and we may see therefore, by a little reflection, that
Tomlinson was a far more perilous companion than Pepper,--for showy
theories are always more seductive to the young and clever than suasive
examples, and the vanity of the youthful makes them better pleased by
being convinced of a thing than by being enticed to it.

A day or two after the narrative of Mr. Tomlinson, Paul was again
visited by Mrs. Lobkins,--for the regulations against frequent visitors
were not then so strictly enforced as we understand them to be now;
and the good dame came to deplore the ill-success of her interview with
Justice Burnflat.

We spare the tender-hearted reader a detail of the affecting interview
that ensued. Indeed, it was but a repetition of the one we have before
narrated. We shall only say, as a proof of Paul's tenderness of heart,
that when he took leave of the good matron, and bade "God bless her,"
his voice faltered, and the tears stood in his eyes,--just as they were
wont to do in the eyes of George the Third, when that excellent monarch
was pleased graciously to encore "God save the King!"

"I'll be hanged," soliloquized our hero, as he slowly bent his course
towards the subtle Augustus,--"I'll be hanged (humph! the denunciation
is prophetic), if I don't feel as grateful to the old lady for her care
of me as if she had never ill-used me. As for my parents, I believe
I have little to be grateful for or proud of in that quarter. My poor
mother, by all accounts, seems scarcely to have had even the brute
virtue of maternal tenderness; and in all human likelihood I shall never
know whether I had one father or fifty. But what matters it? I rather
like the better to be independent; and, after all, what do nine tenths
of us ever get from our parents but an ugly name, and advice which, if
we follow, we are wretched, and if we neglect, we are disinherited?"

Comforting himself with these thoughts, which perhaps took their
philosophical complexion from the conversations he had lately held with
Augustus, and which broke off into the muttered air of--

"Why should we quarrel for riches?"

Paul repaired to his customary avocations.

In the third week of our hero's captivity Tomlinson communica