dark and terrible passions agitating her bosom, looks back over her eventful life, to a period when even her own history is shut to her, only to find the tortures of her soul heightened.  Maria looks back upon a life of fond attachment to her father, to her humble efforts to serve others, and to know that she has borne with Christian fortitude those ills which are incident to humble life.  With her, an emotion of joy repays the contemplation.  To Anna, the future is hung in dark forebodings.  She recalls to mind the interview with Madame Montford, but that only tends to deepen the storm of anguish the contemplation of her parentage naturally gives rise to.  With Maria, the present hangs dark and the future brightens.  She thinks of the absent one she loves-of how she can best serve her aged father, and how she can make their little home cheerful until the return of Tom Swiggs, who is gone abroad.  It must be here disclosed that the old man had joined their hands, and invoked a blessing on their heads, ere Tom took his departure.  Maria looks forward to the day of his return with joyous emotions.  That return is the day dream of her heart; in it she sees her future brightening.  Such are the cherished thoughts of a pure mind.  Poverty may gnaw away at the hearthstone, cares and sorrow may fall thick in your path, the rich may frown upon you, and the vicious sport with your misfortunes, but virtue gives you power to overcome them all.  In Maria’s ear something whispers:  Woman! hold fast to thy virtue, for if once it go neither gold nor false tongues can buy it back.

Anna sees the companion of her early life, and the sharer of her sufferings, shut up in a prison, a robber, doomed to the lash.  “He was sincere to me, and my only true friend—­am I the cause of this?” she muses.  Her heart answers, and her bosom fills with dark and stormy emotions.  One small boon is now all she asks.  She could bow down and worship before the throne of virgin innocence, for now its worth towers, majestic, before her.  It discovers to her the falsity of her day-dream; it tells her what an empty vessel is this life of ours without it.  She knows George Mullholland loves her passionately; she knows how deep will be his grief, how revengeful his feelings.  It is poverty that fastens the poison in the heart of the rejected lover.  The thought of this flashes through her mind.  His hopeless condition, crushed out as it were to gratify him in whose company her pleasures are but transitory, and may any day end, darkens as she contemplates it.  How can she acquit her conscience of having deliberately and faithlessly renounced one who was so true to her?  She repines, her womanly nature revolts at the thought-the destiny her superstition pictured so dark and terrible, stares her in the face.  She resolves a plan for his release, and, relieved with a hope that she can accomplish it while propitiating the friendship of the Judge, the next day seeks him in his prison cell, and with all that vehemence woman,