Permission is granted.  The reader will not fail to discover the object of this procedure.  Keepum hopes to continue the old man in prison, that he may succeed in breaking down the proud spirit of his daughter.

The Commissioner listens attentively to the reading of the objections.  The first sets forth that Mr. McArthur has a gold watch;

Our Charleston readers will recognize the case here described, without any further key. the second, that he has a valuable breast-pin, said to have been worn by Lord Cornwallis; and the third, that he has one Yorick’s skull.  All of these, Mr. Crimpton regrets to say, are withheld from the schedule, which virtually constitutes fraud.  The facile Commissioner bows; the assembled crowd look on unmoved; but the old man shakes his head and listens.  He is surprised to find himself accused of fraud; but the law gives him no power to show his own innocence.  The Judge of the Sessions was competent to decide the question now raised, and to have prevented this reverting to a “special jury”—­this giving the vindictive plaintiff a means of torturing his infirm victim.  Had he but listened to the old man’s tale of poverty, he might have saved the heart of that forlorn girl many a bitter pang.

The motion granted, a day is appointed-ten days must elapse-for a hearing before the Commissioner of “Special Bail,” and his special jury.  The rosy-faced functionary, being a jolly and somewhat flexible sort of man, must needs give his health an airing in the country.  What is the liberty of a poor white with us?  Our Governor, whom we esteem singularly sagacious, said it were better all our poor were enslaved, and this opinion finds high favor with our first families.  The worthy Commissioner, in addition to taking care of his health, is expected to make any number of speeches, full of wind and war, to several recently called Secession Conventions.  He will find time (being a General by courtesy) to review the up-country militia, and the right and left divisions of the South Carolina army.  He will be feted by some few of our most distinguished Generals, and lecture before the people of Beaufort (a very noisy town of forty-two inhabitants, all heroes), to whom he will prove the necessity of our State providing itself with an independent steam navy.

The old Antiquary is remanded back to jail-to wait the coming day.  Maria, almost breathless with anxiety, runs to him as he comes tottering out of Court in advance of the official, lays her trembling hand upon his arm, and looks inquiringly in his face.  “Oh! my father, my father!—­released? released?” she inquires, with quivering lips and throbbing heart.  A forced smile plays over his time-worn face, he looks upward, shakes his head in sorrow, and having patted her affectionately on the shoulder, throws his arms about her neck and kisses her.  That mute appeal, that melancholy voucher of his sorrows, knells the painful answer in her ears, “Then you are not free to come with me?  Oh, father, father!” and she wrings her hands and gives vent to her tears.