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She has had a hard bout on't. Here, Annie, show this here good lady and gentleman to the back kitchen, where Mrs. T lodges. Take care, maʼam, of the stairs,—they're a leetle crazy.'

We passed down into the dark abyss, and were soon at the door of the back kitchen. Upon entering, the scene was one never to be forgotten. Mrs. T― in convulsions, was stretched upon a mattrass on the floor. There was nothing in the room but a small deal table, a broken chair, the bed on which the wretched woman lay, a few fractured cups and saucers, and a pewter pot. The mattrass, ragged and filthy, was placed in a corner of the gloomy unwholesome apartment, and upon this the dying sinner was stretched, evidently in the agonies of death. Her eyes rolled wildly, but the expression was inward. It seemed as if she would have looked into her own soul. There appeared no consciousness of external objects. The scrutiny was within; and this was sufficiently appalling. Her mother, who had accompanied me, was so overcome, that I was obliged to lead her from the chamber. Happily, her daughter, on seeing her, expressed no sense of recognition.

Upon returning to the room, the cause of the scene I had been here called upon to witness was sufficiently apparent. Several women had crowded round the bed, and among them was the apothecary,

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MRS. T'S SUFFERINGS.

who held a bottle in his hand, which he declared to have contained arsenic. The contents had been swallowed by Mrs. T.

After a short interval, there was a slight abatement of her paroxysms, and I took her hand. Every finger was convulsed, and, bathed in a cold, thick unctuous exudation, which made my blood creep up to my heart, where, for a moment, it seemed to stagnate. I spoke to her. My voice appeared to recall her consciousness, and she fixed upon me the full broad glance of her dilated eye; the expression gradually rising in intensity, until it became so concentrated, that I thought it would have reached my inmost soul. At length she stammered, 'I am dy-y-ing; pray for me.'

I immediately prayed aloud, but this only aggravated her sufferings: her convulsions became stronger and more exhausting. Her face was purple. The death struggle was so fierce that her very nails became discoloured, and her feet and hands livid. She bit her tongue and lips, from which the blood lazily trickled, as if there was not enough of life left to impel the purple tide from its ruptured channels. The few broken sentences she uttered, betrayed the dreadful apprehensions under which she was labouring. I proposed to give her the Sacrament; but she pushed me from her with such an effort of expiring energy, that I staggered backward, and,

but for the wall, should have fallen. I saw that, to this dying sinner, religion could afford no hope. She was struggling in the meshes of despair, from which no human arm could extricate her. I here saw an evidence, and I have witnessed many, that the death-bed of infidelity is not only one of awful distrust, but of horror. Death was now about to strike. The desperate gasp, the utter prostration, proclaimed his conquest. I put my mouth to the ear of the unhappy woman, and said, 'Rest your soul upon God's mercy. Have you any hope? if you have, raise your hand.' There was a groan and a spasm,—the foam oozed from her lips,—the corners of her mouth contracted, and all was still! "She died, and made no sign."

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A JUVENILE PARTY.

CHAPTER XXIV.

A JUVENILE PARTY. THE FORTUNE-TELLER.-JULIA — -THE PROPHECY-ITS EFFECTS.-MY VISIT TO JULIA. -HER CREDULITY-NOT TO BE SHAKEN. THE YOUNG LOVER. A SAD CHANGE.

As from the acorn rises the lofty and majestic oak, which furnishes nations their navies, and covers the broad sea with fabrics that live amid its waters and deride their mighty turmoil, when the tempest has lashed them into fury, and they seem to rise from their slumbers as stern arbitrators between life and death, -so, from the most insignificant events are results frequently produced, which furnish matter for the chronicler, spread the blight of desolation upon the domestic hearth, scatter far and wide the seeds of misery, infuse the leaven of destruction into the prosperity of nations, and dash from their brows the crowns of kings.

I was one evening at a friend's house, where a juvenile party had congregated; and while they were actively engaged in the merriment of blindman's-buff, an old woman was said to be at the door who would tell the ladies' fortunes for a trifle. The game was instantly stopped, and the young people begged that the prophetess might be

THE FORTUNE-TELLER.

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admitted. Among the merry group here assembled, was a fine, handsome girl, in her nineteenth year, niece of the gentleman in whose house the juvenile party were assembled. She was the eldest of the company, for I was a mere casual visiter,which consisted exclusively of young persons, forming a little knot of eight school-fellows.

After some demur on the part of my friend, and rather warmer expostulations on mine, which were finally overruled, the pythoness was admitted. She was a very dirty old woman, and seemed to have derived whatever inspiration she might possess, from the spirit of the public-houses, for the aroma of gin,—that bane of vulgar life,—exhaled from her throat, bronzed and scraggy without, with so strong a perfume, as at once to settle the question of her spirituous predilections. Her modes of divination were various: chiromancy, geomancy, and cards, were severally employed to work out the prophecies of this bibacious sybil. Having received sixpence from each girl, she began to give them some account of their future lives, to which they each listened as to the voice of an oracle. Upon my ridiculing the affected prescience of the stranger, Julia the young lady to whom I have already alluded, as if ashamed of being thought so credulous as her companions, expressed her unqualified disbelief in all such predictions. As she