bewildering nature hurried me to the commission of an act at variance with every law of honour and of humanity.
"The picture of grief and distress, overwhelmed with despair, my beloved sister a second time came, but to apprise me of the cause, not so much in hopes of assistance as in search of a brother's sympathy. Her husband, while yet hopeless of recovery, and exhausted by sickness, lingering in existence, was menaced with the terrors of instant imprisonment. It was to avert this imminent and fatal result that I then called upon you, so urgently soliciting your aid—if, perchance, by an addition being made to my own trifling stock in hand, the immediate rigour of the prosecutors might be mitigated by a compromise.
"Unexpectedly the means of making her at once happy by the rescue of her expiring husband from the grasp of his merciless oppressors, were momentarily placed within my reach. As fate would have it, your pocket-book lay before me; I hesitated one instant ere I opened it; but affection, opportunity, desperation conquered. I seized the notes, rushed precipitately, and deposited them in her hands—received a thousand blessings from one whose destiny had seemed from earliest infancy to command mine. Pity, if you can, and
