fy against Maria, and to
close the many portals of a wretched father's heart. He grew very
wretched--very mopy; determined upon cutting adrift shrewd Jack himself,
as a stigma on the name which had once held the mace of mayoralty; made
his will petulantly, for good and all, in favour of Stationer's hall,
and felt very like a man who had lived in vain. "Cut it down; why
cumbereth it the earth?"

Meanwhile, in those two opposite quarters of the world of London,
Newgate and Islington, Sir Thomas's two discarded children were bearing
in a different way their different privations. Poor Maria's hour of
peril had arrived; and amidst all those pains, dangers, and necessities,
a soft and smiling babe was born into the world; gladness filled their
hearts, and praise was on their tongues, when the happy father and
mother kissed that first-born son. It was a splendid boy, they said, and
should redeem his father's fortunes: there was hope in the future, let
the past be what it may; and this new bond of union to that happy
wedded pair made the present--one unclouded scene of gratitude and love.
Who shall sing of the humble ale-caudle, and those cheerful givings to
surrounding poor, scarcely poorer than themselves? Who shall record how
kind was Henry, how useful was the nurse, how liberal the doctor, how
sympathizing all? Who shall tell how tenderly did Providence step in
with another author's night of that same tragedy, and how other avenues
to literary gain stood wide open to industry and genius? It was
happiness all, happiness, and triumph: they were weathering the storm
famously, and had safely passed the breakers of False witness.

Amidst the other part of London sate a sullen fellow, quite alone, in
Newgate, looking for his trial on the morrow, and prophesying accurately
enough how some two days hence, he, John Dillaway, of Broker's alley,
son and heir of the richest stationer in Europe, was to appear in the
character of a convicted felon, and be probably condemned to
transportation for life. A pleasant retrospect was his, a pleasanter
aspect, and a pleasanter prospect; all was pleasure assuredly.

And the morrow duly came; with those implacable approvers, those
accurate Irish witnesses, those tell-tale documents, that prosecuting
crown and bank, that dogged jury, and that sentencing recorder: so then,
by a little after noon, to the scandal of Finsbury square, John Dillaway
discovered that the "wise man's trick or two in the m