e or consciousness
of integrity, however high, could enable him to meet. Creditors came in,
alarmed very naturally at the reports against his solvency, and
demanded settlement of their accounts from the firm. These, in the
first instances, were immediately made out and paid; but this would not
do--other claimants came, equally pressing--one after another--and
each so anxious in the early panic to secure himself, that ere long the
instability which, in the beginning, had no existence, was gradually
felt, and the firm of Harman and M'Loughlin felt themselves on the eve
of actual bankruptcy.

These matters all pressed heavily and bitterly on both father and sons.
But we have yet omitted to mention that which, amidst all the lights
in which the daughter contemplated the ruin of her fair fame, fell with
most desolating consequences upon her heart--we mean her rejection by
Harman, and the deliberate expression of his belief in her guilt. And,
indeed, when our readers remember how artfully the web of iniquity
was drawn around her, and the circumstances of mystery in which Harman
himself had witnessed her connection with Poll Doolin, whose character
for conducting intrigues he knew too well, they need not be surprised
that he threw her off as a deceitful and treacherous wanton, in whom
no man of a generous and honorable nature could or ought to place
confidence, and who was unworthy even of an explanation. Mary
M'Loughlin could have borne everything but this. Yes; the abandonment
of friends--of acquaintances--of a fickle world itself; but here it was
where her moral courage foiled her. The very hope to which her heart had
clung from its first early and innocent impulses--the man to whom she
looked up as the future guide, friend, and partner of her life, and for
whose sake and safety she had suffered herself to be brought within
the meshes of her enemies and his--this man, her betrothed husband, had
openly expressed his conviction of her being unfit to become his wife,
upon hearing from his cousin and namesake an account of what that young
man had witnessed. Something between a nervous and brain fever had
seized her on the very night of this heinous stratagem; but from that
she was gradually recovering when at length she heard, by accident, of
Harman's having unequivocally and finally withdrawn from the engagement.
Under this she sank. It was now in vain to attempt giving her support,
or cheering her spirits. Depression, debilit