many inquiries, I at last arrived at the
door. I was preparing to enter the house when I perceived that my bundle
was gone. I had left it on the stall where I had been sitting. People
were perpetually passing to and fro. It was scarcely possible not to
have been noticed. No one that observed it would fail to make it his
prey. Yet it was of too much value to me to allow me to be governed by a
bare probability. I resolved to lose not a moment in returning.

With some difficulty I retraced my steps, but the bundle had
disappeared. The clothes were, in themselves, of small value, but they
constituted the whole of my wardrobe; and I now reflected that they were
capable of being transmuted, by the pawn or sale of them, into food.
There were other wretches as indigent as I was, and I consoled myself by
thinking that my shirts and stockings might furnish a seasonable
covering to their nakedness; but there was a relic concealed within this
bundle, the loss of which could scarcely be endured by me. It was the
portrait of a young man who died three years ago at my father's house,
drawn by his own hand.

He was discovered one morning in the orchard with many marks of insanity
upon him. His air and dress bespoke some elevation of rank and fortune.
My mother's compassion was excited, and, as his singularities were
harmless, an asylum was afforded him, though he was unable to pay for
it. He was constantly declaiming, in an incoherent manner, about some
mistress who had proved faithless. His speeches seemed, however, like
the rantings of an actor, to be rehearsed by rote or for the sake of
exercise. He was totally careless of his person and health, and, by
repeated negligences of this kind, at last contracted a fever of which
he speedily died. The name which he assumed was Clavering.

He gave no distinct account of his family, but stated, in loose terms,
that they were residents in England, high-born and wealthy. That they
had denied him the woman whom he loved and banished him to America,
under penalty of death if he should dare to return, and that they had
refused him all means of subsistence in a foreign land. He predicted, in
his wild and declamatory way, his own death. He was very skilful at the
pencil, and drew this portrait a short time before his dissolution,
presented it to me, and charged me to preserve it in remembrance of him.
My mother loved the youth because he was amiable and unfortunate, and
chiefly because she fancie