as burning, and close to this stood a table with a shaded
lamp, and by these frail lights a little brightness was shed over this
portion of the vast chamber, while the remainder was shrouded in deep
shadow. As the fitful flashes of the wood-fire shone from time to time
on the walls, little glimpses might be caught of a much-faded tapestry,
representing some scenes from the "AEneid;" but on none of these did
Layton turn an eye nor bestow a thought, for he was deep in sorrowful
reflections of his own,--cares too heavy to admit of any passing
distraction. He was alone, for Agincourt had gone to spend the day
at the "Caprini," whither Alfred would have accompanied him but for
a letter which the morning's post had brought to his hands, and whose
contents had overwhelmed him with sorrow.

It was from his mother, written from a sick-bed, and in a hand that
betokened the most extreme debility. And oh! what intense expression
there is in these weak and wavering lines, wherein the letters seemed to
vibrate still with the tremulous motion of the fevered fingers!--what
a deep significance do we attach to every word thus written! till at
length, possessed of every syllable and every stop, we conjure up the
scene where all was written, and feel as though we heard the hurried
breathing of the sick-room. She had put off writing week after week, but
now could defer no longer. It was upwards of two months since his father
had left her to go to Dublin, and, from the day he went, she had never
heard from him. A paragraph, however, in a morning paper, though not
giving his name, unmistakably alluded to him as one who had grievously
fallen from the high and honorable station he had once occupied, and
spoke of the lamentable reverse that should show such a man in the dock
of a police-court on the charge of insulting and libelling a public
character in a ribald handbill. The prisoner was so hopelessly sunk
in drunkenness, it added, that he was removed from the court, and the
examination postponed.

By selling one by one the little articles of furniture she had, she
contrived, hitherto, to eke out a wretched support, and it was only when
at last these miserable resources had utterly failed her that she was
driven to grieve her son with her sad story. Nor was the least touching
part of her troubles that in which she spoke of her straits to avoid
being considered an object of charity by her neighbors. The very fact
of the rector having overpaid