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former stage drive off. Find out that there are no horses in. Perquisitions reluctantly and indolently made for you at the doctor's, squire L.'s, &c. unsucit being the landlord's interest to detain you; and hence,

Misery 8th.-A day at a country taverp, no books, amusements or compauy, (see Washington Irving's Stout Gentleman;) no good wine, no agreeable prospect, no pleasant scenery, no pretty chambermaids. The day seems like a little eternity,

"Nothing there is to come,and nothing pass." Misery 9th-Arrive at your destination-hotel full-are corkscrewed up five pair of stairs, to a little low dark chamber with two beds. The servant vanishes under the artful pretence of filling your dressing pitcher; but returns not-no bell-grope down to the bar every one busy with the previous customers, in their new coats and smooth skins: bar-keeper, from your muddy travelling frock, and long beard, takes you for your own servant, and minds no thing you say: dressing to go out-find that every thing you want is pre cisely at the nadir of your trunk, which is not quite so handy as an elephant's: clothes full of wrinkles-cravats yellow quizzed by the native dandies, in the reading and bar rooms;-nobody to whom you have cards at home-your banker in the country, to stay a fortnight-little money and no credit-see a fine girl in the streets-laughs at your old fashioned coat, instead of falling in love with your comme de raison; find the reverse of the old proverb, about a prophet in his own country, true-treated rudely at the table d'hôte-quarrel-no friend to take your note-make your dying arrangements, no friend to leave them withbound over to keep the peace, no friend to be bail-get into the coach to returnevery thing worse than before, because you have no curiosity to gratify, and have tired your body and mind into a state of querulous despondence-arrive at home, and learn that in your absence your firm has failed, and your mistress married your rival.-From an American Paper.

THE THREE THIEVES. [Concluded from Page 224.] TRAVERS adopted his wife's advice. He took down the pork and laid it under the bread oven, at the opposite end of the room; after which he lay down, but with a mind ill at ease.

Night being come, the two brothers arrived to accomplish their project; and while the eldest kept watch, Berard began to penetrate the wall, in that part, where he had seen the pork hanging. But he quickly perceived that nothing was left except the string by which it was suspended. "The bird is flown," said he, "we are come too late." Travers, whom his dread of being robbed kept awake, thinking he heard a noise, waked his wife, and ran to the oven to see if the pork was safe. He found it there; but as he was also apprehensive for his barn and stable, he determined to make the with a hatchet, Berard, who had heard circuit of them; and went out armed, him go out, took the opportunity to pick open the door; and approaching the bed, and counterfeiting the voice of pork is removed from the wall. What the busband, "Mary," said he, "the remember, then, that we put it under have you done with it?" "Don't you the oven," answered the wife, “what, has fear turned your brain?” replied the other, "I had only forgot. "No, no," which, he lifts the pork upon his shoulBut stop, I will secure it." In saying ders, and runs off.

carefully visited the doors, Travers reAfter having gone his rounds, and. turned to the chamber. "I have got a husband," said the woman, must be confessed, has a curious head "who, it upon his shoulders, to forget one moment what he had done with his pork another." At these words Travers set up a cry. "I told you, they would steal it from me; it is gone, it is gone, and I shall never see it more." the thieves could not be gone far, he had still some hopes of recovering it; and instantly ran after them.

Yet as

the fields, that led towards the wood, They had taken to a by-path across Hamet went before, to secure the way; where they intended to hide their booty. and the brother, whose load was a considerable impediment, followed him at a small distance. Travers soon came up with the latter. He saw him plainly, and recognized him. somewhat tired," said he, assuming the "You must be voice of the elder brother; "give me the load, and let me take my turn," Berard, who thought his brother was speaking to him, gave Travers the pork and walks on. But he had not proceeded an hundred yards before, when, to his great astonishment, he falls in with Hamet. "Zounds!" cried he, "I have been ensnared. That rogue Travers has taken

me in; but see if I cannot make amends for my folly."

He then strips himself, puts his shirt over his clothes, makes himself a kind of woman's cap, and in this trim runs as fast as he can by another path to the house of Travers, whose arrival he waits at the door. As he sees him approaching, he comes, appearing as his wife, to meet him, and asks, with a feigned voice, whether he had recovered the pork? "Yes, I have it," answered the husband. "Well, give it me, and run quickly to the stable, for I hear a noise there, and I fear they have broke in." Travers then throws the carcase upon the other's shoulder, and goes once more to make his rounds. But when he returns to the house, he is surprised to find his wife in bed, crying, and half dead with fear. He then perceives that he has again been cheated. Nevertheless, he was determined not to give up; and as if his honour was concerned in the adventure, he vowed not to resign the contest, till by some means or other he came off victorious.

He suspected that the thieves this trip would hardly take the same road; but he knew the forest was the place they would make for, and accordingly went the shortest way to it. They had in fact already got there; and in their triumph and eagerness to taste the fruit of their dexterity, they had just lighted a fire at the foot of an oak, to broil a piece of the meat. The wood was green, and burnt but indifferently; so that, to make it blaze, they were obliged to go and gather some dry leaves and rotten branches.

Travers, whom the light directed to the thieves, takes the advantage of their distance from the fire. He strips himself entirely, climbs the oak, suspends himself by one arm, in the position of a man who had been hanged, when he sees them returned, and busy in blowing the fire; he roars out with a voice like thunder, "Unhappy wretches! you will come to the same end as me.' "" The two brothers, in confusion, imagine they see and hear their father, and think of nothing but their escape. The other quickly snatches his clothes and pork, returns in triumph to his wife, and gives an account of his recent victory. She congratulates him with a kiss, on so bold and well executed a manœuvre. "Let us not yet flatter ourselves with too much security," said he, “these queer fellows are not far off, and as long as the pork subsists, I shall not think it out of danger. But boil some water, we'll dress it; and if they

return, we shall see what method they will devise to get hold of it again." The one then made a fire, while the other divided the carcase, and put it piece by piece into the kettle; they both then seated themselves to watch it, one on each side of the fire place.

But Travers, who was almost exhausted for want of rest, and fatigued by the operations of the night, soon began to shew a propensity to sleep. "Go, and lay yourself down," said the wife, "I will take care of the pot; all is fastened, there is nothing to fear. At all events, if I should hear a noise, I'll give you notice." On this assurance, he threw himself in his clothes upon the bed, and immediately fell fast asleep. The wife continued for some space of time to watch the cauldron; but drowsiness began to overpower her likewise, and at last she fell asleep in her chair.

In the mean time, our thieves, after recovering from their alarm, had returned to the oak; but finding there neither pork, nor man in chains, they easily unravelled the plot. They conceived themselves dishonoured, if in this conflict of stratagems, Travers should finally have the advantage: so they returned to his house, resolved, for the last time, to strain their ingenuity to the utmost.

Before they undertook any thing, Berard looked through the hole he had made in the wall, to see if the enemy was upon his guard. He saw on the one hand Travers stretched out upon his bed, and on the other the wife, whose head nodded from one side to another, with a ladle in her hand, while the pork was boiling in the cauldron. "They had a mind to save us the trouble of cooking it," said Berard to his brother: "and indeed it was the least they could do, considering what work they have given us already. Be steady, and rest assured that I will help you to some of it." He then went, and cut down a long pole, which he sharpens at one end. With this pole he climbed to the roof, and letting it down through the chimney, sticks it into a piece of pork, and raises it up.

Travers at that instant happened to wake. He saw the manoeuvre, and judged, that, with such expert enemies, peace was preferable to war. "Friends," cried he, "we are both to blame; you, in breaking through the roof of my house; and I, in not inviting you to partake of my pork. Come down, and let us feast together." He went and opened the door to them. They set down together at table, and were heartily reconciled to each other.

THE CONVICT.

To the south of Fort Cumberland, on the Hampshire coast, rises a little knoll of ground, from which the adjacent landscape assumes the most picturesque appearance. On one side, a gloomy morass dimly blackens the distant horizon; but to the right of the fort, the gently swelling hills that stretch along the sea-coast, assume fainter tints as they recede from the view, till at last they terminate in the deep blue ocean; beyond, at the very verge of distance, stands the gibbet on which the unhappy convicts were executed. It is situated on a bleak desolate moor; and as the mouldering remnants of the victims of justice swing loosely in the gale, or drop piecemeal on the earth, the sea-birds scream around the spot, anxious for their prey, and presenting an image of unrelieved horror. When the day is stormy, the dark waves dash against the hills, the sea-fog rolls down their sides, and the artificial knoll of earth is wet with the spray that foams around it with resistless energy. The eye of the passing stranger is then perhaps attracted to the spot; for when the lowlands are partially inundated, it rears its blue summits from the surrounding ocean. It is interesting to his feelings, from its utter desolation; but becomes sacred to his memory while he listens to the tale of sorrow connected with it, which we have often heard in our infancy, and can never wholly obliterate. About thirty years ago, a young man, with an aged grandmother, and her son, came to reside at a trifling distance from Fort Cumberland; they took up their abode at a small cottage in the neighbourhood, and principally depended for subsistence on the precarious occupation of fishing. They had once been respect able tradesmen at Portsmouth; but a variety of unforeseen circumstances had reduced them to poverty, and compelled them to seek the security of solitude. For a few months after their arrival, the encouragement they received from the fort, where they daily carried their baskets of fish, had restored them to comparative tranquility, when the unusual violence of some equinoctial gales dashed their little fishing smack against the adjacent rocks, and rendered their humble occupation at once dangerous and profitless. To increase, if possible, their misery, the old lady, and the father of the young man, languished in the agony of extreme want, without either friends or relatives to succour them. He could have borne his own sorrows with firmness; but the sight of his dearest con

nexions dying from positive exigence, and sinking on their couch of sickness, without even a mouthful of bread to eat, and scarcely a torn rag to shield them from the chilly night-air, drove him to the verge of distraction. When he saw the fading lustre in the eyes of his aged grandmother-her form slowly sinking in the grave-her wan looks imploring even one solitary meal to comfort her, and her pallid cheeks gradually assuming the cadaverous hue of death, his agony assumed the aspect of determined insanity. He seized the opportunity, when his father, partially recovered from indisposition, had gone to petition the governor of the fort for relief, to station himself by the high-road, with the intention of wresting money from each traveller, for the purposes of future provision. With a brace of horse-pistols in his pocket, he sallied out from the cottage to put his nefarious design into immediate execution. The night was well adapted to the occasion: it was dark and stormy; and the continued roar of the ocean waves, and the solitary shriek of the sea-bird, increased the natural gloom of the scene. The young man in the mean time hastened tremblingly onward, and his mind assumed a stern resolution from the corresponding influence of the night prospect. A tempest had already commenced, the hollow-sounding thunder echoed along the dim arch of heaven, and the lightning flashed with splendour around him. As he passed the lonely gibbet under which the bones of unburied malefactors were yet bleaching, and heard the sullen swing of the chains to which a mouldering skeleton was attached, he imagined his own similar situation in case of detection, and his boasted courage for the first time failed him. The storm, meanwhile, raged with unabated violence, and a broad stream of lightning shone dimly through the ghastly skeleton, whose whitening bones hung dangling in the wind. At this instant the noise of approaching footsteps was heard echoing across the heath; the sounds advanced nearer, and a dark figure, wholly muffled in a night-cloak, stood by the side of the robber. He drew the pistol from its hiding-place, and the stranger moved slowly on; twice he attempted to pull the trigger, and twice it trembled in his grasp. The courage of despair came at length to his assistance; he thought of his dying grandmother; his own father starving in utter hopelessness; and the thought smote on his phrenzied imagination. He fired; and with a deep suppressed groan of anguish, the death

choaked voice of which rushed full on his racked brain, the stranger dropped lifeless at his feet. Agitated with a variety of contending emotions, he bore the ensanguined body to his cottage, and placed it on a chair, until he should return with a lanthorn, to despoil it of its money and wearing-apparel.

It was now deep midnight; the old lady had long since retired to her bed, and all around was still, but the distant roar of waters, or the sullen sonnd of the north wind, as it whistled gloomily through the bleak walls of the cottage. After a short interval the murderer returned, bearing a dark lanthorn in his hand. He cast a suspicious glance around, locked the door of the apartment, and then with a trembling frame attempted to unveil the countenance of his victim. Gently he drew back the cloak that concealed his face! the body rolled with a heavy crash on the ground, and disclosed the glazed eyes, and convulsed stiffened features of his father! -of that father for whose sake he had thus plunged himself deep in guilt, and whom he had murdered as he returned from the fort with a promise of assistance from the governor.` He gazed at the corpse as though he had gazed his whole soul away at the sight; he burst out into a hellish shout of triumphant laughter, and the fire of the deepest, the deadliest madness flashed across his brain. He then raised the body from the ground; and with a bitter shriek, the sound of which is described as having been like nothing earthly, rushed with it into the room of his grandmother. A dim rushlight was burning in the chimney corner as he entered, and the tattered fringe was drawn close round the bed. He approached he drew aside the curtains, and roused the trembling woman by the wild phrenzy of his triumph She started at the noise, and the first objects that presented themselves, were the bloodstained figure of her son, gazing at her with eyes fixed in the livid ghastliness of death, and the fearful aspect of her grandchild, gnashing his teeth with phrenzy, blaspheming with the most awful impre cations, and shouting aloud with the unearthly yellings of a dæmon. She could sce-she could feel no more-death seized her at the instant; she cast but one look of kindness, as if imploring a blessing on her murderer, and then closed her eyes in the eternal slumber of the grave.

In the mean time the shrieks of the unhappy parricide drew the attention of some guards belonging to the fort, and who happened to be passing at the moment. They rushed for

ward to investigate the cause, and beheld a sight of never-to-be-forgotten horror. The dead body of the old lady was reposing on the bed, where she had but just now expired, and the maniac had placed the corpse of his father in his arms, and was weeping and laughing over it, like an infant, as he unconsciously twined his fingers through the dark grissly locks stiffened with clotted gore, and passed his hand across the pallid features that struck to his heart with the icy chillness of death. With some difficulty the guards were able to secure him, stratagem at length prevailed, and he was removed on board the convict ship that was stationed off the coast opposite Fort Cumberland. The bodies of the mother and her son were quietly committed to the grave, and the circumstances of the dreadful transactions remembered but as a dream that once was.

Time rolled on, and as the hour of his trial approached, the spirits of the poor maniac seemed likely to settle into a calm melancholy. The heavy clogs that had hitherto been attached to his feet, were now, therefore, removed, and he was permitted to occupy the cabin that looked out upon the sea shore. Here he would sit for hours watching the vessels as they passed to and fro, and weeping at the remembrance of former days. At a distance was the gibbet, the scene at once of his guilt, and its probable punishment. A shudder of horror passed over his countenance whenever he beheld it, and the wildness of insanity again took possession of his soul. But when the fit was passed, tears would sometimes come to his relief, and he would weep alone and in silence. His disposition, naturally generous and kind-hearted, appeared softened by misfortune, and even his brother convicts would feel for so lonely a situation, as they saw him with eyes fixed on vacancy, muttering and talking to himself. His health in the meantime failed, and it was evident, from the increasing depression of his spirits, and the hectic glow of his complexion, that "his days were numbered in the land." For himself, he seemed always to rejoice in the prospect of approaching death, and a faint smile would often pass across his face, as he surveyed his wasted features, and felt the increasing languor of his frame, as the hour of his dissolution arrived, he wished for the last time to behold the grave where all that was once dear to him lay buried. With this visionary idea, he seized the fitting opportunity, when the windows of his cabin were thrown open, and the guards had returned for the night, to emancipate

himself from the slight shackles that bound him, and swim to the neighbouring shore.

At the dead hour of midnight, lights were seen moving in the convict ship, the alarm bell was rung, the thunder of cannon echoed across the ocean, and the universal confusion of the guards and seamen announced the escape of the prisoner. A well manned boat, and in which two savage blood-hounds were placed, was instantly rowed to the sea coast, and the dogs, closely followed by their pursuers, were sent to hunt out the residence of the maniac. They set forward on their chace, and soon arrived at the little cot tage where the sufferer once dwelt, and which was now generally avoided as the unholy resort of evil spirits. The officers approached at the instant, but had scarcely arrived, .when a faint shriek of agony was heard. It proceeded from the convict, who had been traced to the ruined home of his father, and was discovered sobbing on the matted couch where he had last slept. The bloodhounds rushed upon their prey, and ere a few minutes had elapsed, the corpse of the parricide, torn in a thousand pieces, lay scattered in that mangled state upon the ground.

He was buried with his murdered victims, in the little knoll of earth that we have mentioned in the opening description, and though "the winds of many winters have sighed over his remains," and the sea birds have built their nests upon his grave, he lies as quietly as if all nature was hushed into stillness around him. His tale, meanwhile, is often told to the passing stranger, as he pauses to contemplate the wild spot where he sleeps, and the tear of genuine pity often falls at the remembrance of his misfortunes. Superstition has consecrated his burial place, and when the dark wave dashes against the beach, and the rising storm broods over the face of the landscape, his spirit is reported to rise from its cold sepulchre, and exult in the sight of destruction.

AN OLD SAILOR'S STORY

I belonged to the frigate, lying at Plymouth; and we had a new Captain appointed indeed it was high time, for the old un was one of your but avast, he's in t'other world, so his reck'ning's up here; and its cowardly to rip old grievances out of the grave. Well, our new Commander read his commission, and a finer-looking old gemman never crack'd a king's biscuit. "My lads, (said he,) I understands you've

had some complaints among ye. Now all I've got to say to you is this here: Do your duty like men, and you shall never want for encouragement. Here's a sweet ship and a good crew: stand by me, and I'll stand by you.' That was just what we wanted, so we give him three cheers and piped to grog. 'Where does he come from?' says Dick Bobstay. I don't remember hearing any thing of his bearings and distances afore to-day. What ship has he commanded ?’—‹ ’Tis fifteen years since he was taken by an Algerine, after losing his masts and throwing his guns overboard, in a gale of wind, (replied a young Midshipman,) he has pass'd the intervening time in slavery, for every body at home thought the ship had foundered, and all hands perish'd. He has felt cruelty, and will practise mercy.'- Nobly said, young gentleman, (said Dick;) give a ship's company good officers, and a fig for cropeaus and flying Dutchmen.' Just then the word was pass'd for the coachhorses and bloods (that's the barge and galley's crews) to get harness'd, and be in readiness to go ashore on duty, as soon as the sun had gone to bathe his beams in the western wave after the toil and heat of the day. The hour arrived, and headed by the third Lieutenant we landed to press. We were just crossing one of the streets, when we fell in with a young man and a lad. 'Heave too, (said the Lieutenant, seeing they were about to sheer off;) what ship do you belong to? The Adversity.' -AdversityAdversity,-that must be a hard-ship;there's no such name in the British navy. Where do you come from?'-'From the port of Tribulation, bound to the Straits of Difficulty.'- Aye, aye, I see how it is, (cried an old Master's Mate)-I see how it is, they're Yankees-them there are American consarns, so we may as well make sail again.'- Avast, (said the Lieutenant,) we must send them down to the boat. By what right?' enquired the man. Right! (repeated one of the gang;) here's a pretty fellow! Talk about right among man-of-wars-men! Halloo, young Fly-by-night! (addressing the lad,) what have you got to say why you shouldn't serve His Majesty? He'll make a smart top-man, your honour.

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Silence, Sir, and do your duty with humanity,' said the Lieutenant angrily, observing he had grasp'd the trembling boy's arm. Then we may proceed.'No, we want hands, and my orders are imperative. You must with us.'

Never! (said the other, pulling forth a pistol from his breast:) My liberty is as dear to me as life, and he who robs me

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