"Unwelcome advice, dear, not bad. Will you consult Dr. Amboyne? he sleeps here to-night. He often comes here now, you know." Then the widow colored just a little.

"Oh yes, I know; and I approve."

Dr. Amboyne came to dinner. In the course of the evening he mentioned his patient Coventry, and said he would never walk again, his spine was too seriously injured.

"How soon will he die? that is what I want to know," said Henry, with that excessive candor which the polite reader has long ago discovered in him, and been shocked.

"Oh, he may live for years. But what a life! An inert mass below the waist, and, above it, a sick heart, and a brain as sensitive as ever to realize the horrid calamity. Even I, who know and abhor the man's crimes, shudder at the punishment Heaven inflicts on him."

There was dead silence round the table, and Little was observed to turn pale.

He was gloomy and silent all the evening.

Next morning, directly after breakfast, his mother got him, and implored him not to waste his youth any longer.