hundreds were rapidly dissipated. Downdown-down the ladder of depravity the unfortunate girl rushed with headlong speed. In three months she was left without a shilhing; and in six-there was not a more abandoned cast-away on the town, to record with curses in her lucid moments-" few and far between"-the deadly injury she had sustained from "villanous man."

Such was the female who had elicited Brian's unbounded sympathy, and who was now domiciled in the state chamber of the Fortune of War.

tel-piece. "This cursed remedy won't drown it. And shall I lead that unsuspicious youth to this shambles-this Golgo tha ;-conduct to the executioner, and in the morring of life, that generous and openhanded gentleman? Not I, by Heaven! no matter what the consequences to myself may prove. Has a voice, for many a long month, sounded with kindly accents in my ear but his? Let us see his gift-a few shillings probably," and she drew Brian's purse from her bosom. "Gold!--one, two, three pieces -ay and silver too! He rescued me, as he thought, from suicide, and in return I'll lead the victim to the slaughter-house. No-no;

A cracked hand-bell was on the table, and the lady sounded a gentle alarum, and in person the landlord responded to the sum-1 were worse than the devil himself could Í do aught so fiendish ;-I'll save him. But here come more than one; and now to deceive those who would be deceivers !"

mons.

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"I say, Moll, how did ye succeed?" 'Splendidly!" replied the lost one. "But in with some brandy-and-water; you know the captain will stand all."

The host sounded the cracked bell, and the lady's order was duly attended to. "Do you think you can get him here ?" said the landlord.

"He's leerey," returned the lady, "but I'll try it heavy on to-morrow."

"Matters could be managed here so comfortably," observed the fighting-man. "A nice supper-hocus him afterwards-a pail of water next-wipe his hair dry-and Wakley would call it apoplexy."

"D-n it!" exclaimed the lost girl; "don't speak to me of murder! Since that poor sailor's death I have known no peace of mind-though I had no hand in it, as you could prove.

"No, no," said the Pet; "you were only the decoy-duck. In the present case, that's all we want from you."

"I can't-I won't," replied the fallen one; My conscience forbids it."

"Ha ha ha!" laughed the ruffian. "Conscience! I never knew before now that we had such an article in the Fortune of War!"

Hastily she concealed the money in her bosom, and with an indifference that shewed her hackneyed in duplicity, she assumed the reckless bearing of one in whom every better feeling had been utterly extinguished.

The door next moment was unclosed, and "the Pet" introduced his friend "the Captain." Need we tell the reader the secret at once, or will he guess it? In the worthy gentleman who patronized the Fortune of War, we again present him to an old acqaintance, Hans Wildman.

The Captain-for it was his pleasure to assume that title-had improved his outer man extensively; so far as new and ill-assorted garments add to the appearance of a blackguard. It was evident that he had been drinking; and, in his own ruffian parlance, he announced that he was 66 a trifle sprung.' "What the devil kept you?" exclaimed the cast-away. "I have been waiting for you here these two hours."

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Why, an ye must have the truth, girl, I have been cruising eastward-and dropped, at Execution Dock, upon an old acquaint

ance.

"The precise locality," muttered the ruined girl, "where ruffians of the sort should congregate."

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"Oh, God!" exclaimed the wretched girl, "how fearful has been my fall! One short year since I had a conscience,-ay, and one that did not reproach me,-but now,-oh! Well," continued the captain," may I be curses on the head of him who wrought my blessed, but I thought that Bouncing Bill had ruin! I must not think-I dare not-it been scragged ten years ago, at Jamaica. would drive me mad. This must remedy Isn't it funny how old friends will run against remorse;" and seizing the tumbler which each other in this here Lunnun? Blow me, stood beside her, she drained it to the bottom. if I ever met a devil harder up--for a mar"That's what I calls a sensible remark," ket-gardener would not have accepted of returned the ruffian host. "Whenever I Bill's rigging to dress a scare-crow with. feels myself a little queerish, there's nothing sets a man so soon to rights as brandy. We'll have a drop neat, and score it to the Captain;" and so saying, the Leg Alley Pet left the state-chamber for the laudable purpose he had expressed.

"Conscience cannot be smothered!" said the lost girl, as she leaned against the man

When we spliced the main-brace, I turned into a slop-shop and bent a new suit of canvas for my old pal, and he's coming here at eight this evening. He's rather shy at present, as there's a charge or two agin him at the police place. But if we required assist ance, Bill would be the boy-he's up to any thing, and wants a job most preciously."

"Ill tell you what my mother used to shillings were thrown on the table, and Massay." returned the proprietor of the Fortune ter Joey vanished forthwith to take pleasure of War-"Too many cooks spoil the broth,' in a den at Smithfield, where rats were masand the fewer employed in a heavy job like sacred by the half hundred, and unhappy what's in hand, the better for all engaged, brutes mangled each other for the entertaincaptain. If Poll, here, will only trap the ment of their proprietors, who, in the scale bird—and there's not a cleverer wench from of brutality held a much higher position than this to St. Giles's-rest assured we'll cage the savage animals they owned. him quietly, and no mistake."

"You're right, my boy," returned the captain, "but where's that devil's bird, Early Joe? I want to know how our man has amused himself, to-day?"

"Poll can give you full information as to that she has had him regularly in tow," returned the pride of Leg Lane. "But I hear Joe's whistle. I'll call him in.'

"And bring a drop of aniseed at the same time," added the commander.

When the lost girl had communicated the particulars of her interview with Brian in the Park, and also told Wildman that he had promised to meet her in the same place next morning, great was the satisfaction of the mariner. He doubted not that his fair accomplice would induce the confiding victim to visit the Fortune of War, where he had, with his worthy ally, the Pet, to use their own rascally parlance, "made all safe" for his destruction. But lost, humbled, degraded, In a few minutes the host returned with almost brutalized as the wretched girl was, the cordial, accompanied by a blackguard a spark of womanly pity and gratitude still boy. A more perfect picture of precocious slumbered in her breast. The promptness villany could not have been produced, had with which the youth had flown to rescue every haunt of crime been ransacked, than her from death-the ardor with which he reahe who stood now before his patron-the soned on the heinous crime, whose commiscaptain-in the person of the "Early One." sion he had prevented-the reckless generosIn appearance, he might have passed for ity with which he forced her to accept his twelve, but in reality he was twenty; and purse-all this was passing in her mind, there was not a felon in the metropolis, who when the voice of the amiable hostess interhad even doubled him in years, who was rupted her course of thought, and opening more familiar with every species of delin- the door of the state chamber, the lady adquency than this interesting young gentle-dressed herself in turn to her guest and liege man. His pigmy form was united to a most repulsive face, whose ensemble indicated generally an impudence not to be abashed, united with cat-like cunning. The eye alone would have put the most unsuspicious stranger on his guard-it was jet black, small, piercing, and buried beneath a contracted brow which half concealed it. Altogether, did one wish to sce juvenile ruffianism impersonated, he had only to look upon " the Early One." "Well, Joey," enquired Mr. Wildman, "what have ye been about, to-day ?"

"Vatchin that ere chap in Craven Street. I dodged him till he fell into Pol's hands and when she parted with him I housed him in the Haymarket."

"That's a good boy," replied the captain, in a patronizing tone.

"I tell you what," returned the amiable youth, I would precious rather you would give me a nip of that ere stuff you're swallorin yerself, than any of your good boy gammon."

"And that you shall have," returned Mr. Wildman, as he filled a glass which the young vagabond bolted instanter.

lord.

"I say, Ben, don't ye be after lushing here all day. A man from the Rookery vants ye upon bisniss, and there's a gent at the bar as vishes to have a vord or two vith the captain."

"What sort of cove is he?" demanded Mr. Wildman. "What's the cut of his jib like-and what canvas is he under ?"

Had the mariner addressed the fair hostess in the language spoken in the Holy Land, and which in Petticoat Lane is designated “Thieves' Latin," she would have understood him correctly; but to her his nautical jargon was an unknown tongue.

"I knows nothing of jibs and canvas," she returned, "but this I knows precious vell, that never did an uglier customer bolt a flash of lightning at the counter of the Fortune than himself. I thinks he be's a fighting-man, for one peeper is in mourning and the other darkened for life."

"He's short of day-light," continued the mariner, "is he?"

"He's blind of an eye, and ugly as if somebody had bespoke him," responded the lady. Right as a trivet," replied the captain.

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"I say, captain," continued the Early One, as I'm not vanted for nothing to-night, I" It's the Bouncer, and no mistake." ́ And vish you would stand little tin, as I vishes following the hostess and the Leg Lane Pet, to go to the dog-fight. Stump up four or Mr. Wildman quitted the room, shut the door five bob, vill you?" after him, and left the fallen girl in posses sion of the private chamber of the Fortune of War.

To the modest request of his protege, Hans Wildman graciously assented. The required

For a minute or two after their departure, [ Mary Hargrave maintained a gloomy silence, and, wrapped in bitter meditations, she paced the room back and forwards. Stopping before the fire-place, she viewed for a moment her pale and wasted countenance in the cracked fragments of a shattered lookingglass, which, years ago, had been demolished in some drunken row."

"And is it come to this?" she muttered, as a deep long sigh escaped a surcharged

bosom. Is this indeed the face a father

gazed upon with pleasure and affection, and a lover swore was fair? Curses follow the false villain who robbed its owner of her innocence, and left her the wreck she is! What will be my end? I can more than guess it. The farce enacted this morning in the Park will be tragically enacted hereafter. Ha! what said I? Dare I blaspheme against the sacred truths a doting father taught, even from the time I sate lisping on

his knee? No--no-no!--my trembling heart tells me there is indeed an hereafter. Fearful thought! to one so steeped in guilt as I. And shall I despair and die, like the beasts which perish? No-I'll do one atoning act, and save him who would have saved

What then? Young as he is, fling myself upon his generosity, and ask him to restore me-what?--my purity! no, no!-back-ground a brilliancy of fortune, which, impossible.