the officer assisted Patience to ascend the scaffold- ing to a station behind her husband’s chair, con- fronting the concourse.
Then Harris discovered her — the young girl, his much cherished wife, standing by his side in the disgrace of the pillory.
“Good Lord!“ he cried, driven from his moderation of speech, “how came you here, Patience? Why did Mrs. Lucy permit you to stray? Oh! Lord, this is indeed anguish.”
But she looked him in the face, only panting with her toil, and, while a bright red colour swept over the paleness of her fatigue, uttered something that sounded like a sigh of relief, and said, with a little echo of exultation, “I have found you out, Benjamin.”
He stared in wonder and doubt.
“It will kill you. Oh! how can I save you?“
Patience reasoned with him.
“Hush, Benjamin, do not be faithless. I thank God I found you out.”
Then Benjamin Harris understood his wife, and was comforted for his trial, and blessed her with a mighty blessing.
Sir Roger named the woman by a foul epithet, and demanded that she should be expelled from her post, and there were signs of contention among the by-standers. Harris’s lips quivered.
“She is my wife,” he said, appealingly. “Brethren, you have accused me of other thefts. Answer me this question: Have I taken from you one of your wives?“
“No, master, you are guiltless there,” admitted a straightforward voice, whose owner was not very widely removed from righteousness.
“Whatever scurvy tricks you’ve played us, we own you yield that game to the debauched cavaliers.”
“No credit to you, your own is good enough,” another growled out — an irrestrainable compliment.
Harris heard it, and a smile that showed sweet, glimmered over the care on his face. From that moment no farther opposition was attempted to Patience’s intrusion; and it was observable, that though railing was still vented, it was now delivered only by the sheerly senseless and abusive railers; and all flights of gross and offensive material were either fearfully intermitted or cautiously directed wide of the pair.
Crude and coarse as the mass of the spectators were, they began to be conscious of an element they had not calculated upon in their show, and which it was very doubtful whether the King’s or the Duke’s theatre could have afforded them in equal vividness and purity: the man in his prime, and the slight woman held up on an eminence before them, witnesses to the constancy of; their opinions and the strength and sacredness of the tie which bound them.
Sir Roger, with a curse, strode away to some fresh oppression; the courtiers became silent in contemplation, yawned, and prepared to go in I search of a lighter diversion, but, with their marvellous versatility, one or two of these professed reprobates, ere they departed, lifted their hats without a jest to the loyalty on that scaffold.
“They have confiscated our goods, too, dear Patience, beyond what I can ever hope to retrieve,” Harris informed her, wiling away the tedious ordeal by passing discourse, “and I have thoughts of sailing to the Americas, where a man may pursue his calling in peace, and peradventure in prosperity. I was minded to leave you in England till I was settled; but look not on me so wistfully, I will carry you wdth me now, though we should lie on the deck or in the forest, and build our hut with our own hands, for I have found you out:“ and Patience raised her head, as if he had clothed her with honour.
No, reader, this heroism was not without parallel, when Russell kissed his children about to be fatherless without breaking down, and his fond, faithful wife took her last embrace, keeping back every tear, and silencing every sob, that she might not disturb his equanimity.
As the time wore past, the declining sun shot a beam through the houses, which dazzled Harris’s eyes; he could not shift his position, and being in a degree spent in body and mind, and exhausted with previous confinement and abstinence, he could not resist wincing and looking faint as he encountered this last drop in his cup.
Patience undid her muffler, advanced a step, and flung it skilfully across the balustrade, so as to succeed in screening her husband’s face. The officer interposed; he durst not see the least interference with the framework of the blessed pillory, no, not with a rib or spar of its skeleton; but his resistance was greeted wdth such a hum of dissent and murmur of anger, that he relinquished his purpose, and did not detach the kerchief.
Nay, wrhen the prisoners were at length released from their so-called ignominy, and formally set at liberty, with a command to shut their presses, as the apostles were bidden close their mouths, and Harris was detected, writh his wdfe under his arm, hieing home as fast as his cramps would admit to Gracechurch Street, actually a brief cheer greeted their tingling ears, so irrational as well as uncouth was the old burden they had borne.
{To be continued.)
WILD ASSES.
BY THE LATE D. W. MITCHELL.
We are so accustomed in this equestrian land to regard the ass, the ill-used, persecuted ass, with contempt and disdain, that an untravelled English- man can hardly bring himself to believe that such noble beasts exist as are sent from Goza at a hundred guineas a-piece to far Virginia, where mules of great stature are invaluable.
The asses of Goza are generally of a deep dark brown, varying to black. In Spain wre have a race of splendid animals of every shade of grey to creamy w hite, which last extend along the African coast to Egypt and Syria, where they are the Mollahs’ favourite hack. In Norfolk there are a few of these white asses, as w*ell as pied, all probably of Spanish origin, like the troop which were formerly at Stowre. Naturalists tell us that the domestic ass is descended from an animal which still roams in Abyssinia, ’clept the Onager, of which M. Delaporte, the French Consul at Cairo some time ago sent a specimen to the Jardin des Plantes, at Paris. He looks marvellously like an
ordinary ass, notwithstanding, and has none of the