said, and crying at being awaked, obeyed; and, falling at her feet, and supporting themselves by her gown, said, 'Pay, dood ady, don't hurt daddy! pay don't, dood ady!'

Touched, yet filled with augmented dismay by their prayers, Juliet, tenderly embracing, carried them back to bed; and, with words of comfort, and kind promises, soon hushed them again to sleep.

But the mother was not to be appeased; she had flung herself upon her knees, and upon her knees she pertinaciously kept; sobbing as if her heart were bursting, and lamenting that her husband never would listen to her, or things would not have come to such a pass.

Juliet, full of compassion, yet shuddering, attempted to console her, but would enter into no engagement. Pity, in such a case, however sincerely felt, could not take the lead; humanity itself invoked justice; and she determined to let no personal consideration whatsoever, interfere any longer with her causing an immediate investigation to be made into this fearful business.

The poor woman would not quit the floor, even when, in despondence, she gave over her kneeling importunity. Juliet, from the instant that she discovered how deeply the husband was involved, forbore all enquiry that might make the wife an informer against him; and sate by her side, trying to revive her, with offers of friendship and assistance.

But when, anxious to escape from this eventful Forest, and still confiding in the simplicity and goodness of her hostess, she begged a clear direction to the shortest way for getting to the high road; saying, 'Alas! how little had I imagined that there had been any spot in England, where travellers were thus dreadfully waylaid to their destruction!' Dame Fairfield, suddenly ceasing her outcries, demanded what she meant; saying, 'Why sure, and sure, there be no daunger to nobody in our Forest! We do go up it and down it, noight and day, without no manner of fear; and though I do come from afar off myself, being but a straunger in these parts, till I was married; my feather-in-law, who has lived in them, mon and boy, better than ninety and odd years,—for, thof a be still as fresh as a rose, a be a'most a hondred; he do tell me that a would carry his gold watch, if a had one, in his open hand, from top to bottom of our nine walks, in the pitch of the night; and a should aunswer to come to no harm; for a had never heard of a traveller as had had so much as a hair of his head hurt in the New Forest.'

'What is it you tell me, my good dame?' cried Juliet amazed: 'What are these alarming scenes that I have witnessed? And why are your apprehensions for your husband so direful?'

'The La be good unto me!' exclaimed the dame: 'why sure and sure you do no' go to think the poor mon be a murderer?'

'I am disposed to think whatever you will bid me,' replied Juliet, 'for I see in you such perfect truth and candour, that I cannot hesitate in giving you my belief.'

'Why the La be good unto me, my good gentlewoman, there be but small need to make bad worse! What the poor mon ha' done, may bring un to be honged and transported; but if so be a had killed a mon, a might go to old Nick besoides; and no one could say a deserved ony better.'

Juliet earnestly begged an explanation; and Dame Fairfield then confessed, that her husband and Nat Mixon were deer-stealers.

After the tremendous sensations to which the mistake of Juliet, from her ignorance of this species of traffic, had given rise, so unexpected a solution of her perplexity, made this crime, contrasted with the assassination of a fellow-creature, appear venial. But though relieved from personal terrours, she would not hazard weakening the morality, in lessening the fears of the good, but uncultivated Dame Fairfield, by making her participate in the comparative view taken by herself, of the greater with the less offence. She represented, therefore, warmly and clearly, the turpitude of all failure of probity; dwelling most especially upon the heinousness of a breach of trust.

The good woman readily said, that she knew, well enough, that the deer were as much the King's Majesty's as the Forest; and that she had told it over and over to her husband; and bid him prepare for his latter end, if he would follow such courses: 'But the main bleame, it do all lie in Nat Mixon; for a be as bad a mon as a body might wish to set eyes on. And a does always say a likes ony thing better than work. It be he has led my poor husband astray: for, thof a be but a bad mon, at best, to my mishap! a was a good sort of a husband enough, poor mon, till a took to these courses. But a knows I do no' like un for that; and that makes it, that a does no' much like me. But I would no' ha' un come to be honged or transported, if so be a was as onkoind agen! I would sooner go with un to prison; thof it be but a dismal life to be shut up by dark walls, and iron bars for to see out of! but I'd do it for sure and sure, not to forsake un, poor mon! in his need; if so be I could get wherewithal to keep my little dearys.'

Touched by such genuine and virtuous simplicity, Juliet now promised to apply to some powerful gentleman, to take her husband from the temptation of his present situation; and to settle them all at a distance from the Forest.

The good woman, at this idea, started up in an extacy, and jumped about the room, to give some vent to her joy; kissing her little ones till she nearly suffocated them; and telling them, for sure and certain, that they had gotten an angel come amongst them, to save them all from shame. 'For now,' she continued, 'if we do but get un away from Nat Mixon and his wife, who be the worst mon in all the Forest, a wull think no more of selling unlawful goods than unlawful geame.'

Juliet, though delighted at her happiness, was struck with the words 'unlawful goods;' which she involuntarily repeated. Dame Fairfield, unable, at this moment, to practise any restraint upon her feelings, plumply, then, acknowledged that Nat Mixon was a smuggler, as well as a deer-stealer: and that three of them were gone, even now, about the country, selling laces, and cambrics, and gloves, just brought to land.

This additional misdemeanour, considerably abated the hopes of reformation which had been conceived by Juliet; and every word that, inadvertently, escaped from the unguarded dame, brought conviction that the man was thoroughly worthless. To give him, nevertheless, if possible, the means to amend; and, at all events, to succour his good wife, and lovely children, occupied as much of the thoughts of Juliet as could be drawn, by humanity, from the danger of her own situation, and her solicitude to escape from the Forest.

More fearful than ever of losing her way, and falling into new evil, she again entreated Dame Fairfield to accompany her to the next town on the morrow. The dame agreed to every thing; and then, light of heart, though heavy with fatigue, went to rest; and was instantly visited by the best physician to all our cares.

Juliet, also, courted repose; and not utterly in vain; though it came not to the relief of her anxious spirits, agitated by all the anticipating inquietude of foresight, with the same salutary facility with which it instantly hushed the fears and the griefs of the unreflecting, though feeling Dame Fairfield.

The moment that the babbling little voices of the children reached, the next morning, the ear of Juliet, she descended from her small chamber, to hasten the breakfast, and to quicken her departure. Dame Fairfield, during the preparations and the repast, happy in new hope, and solaced by unburthening her heart, conversed, without reserve, upon her affairs; and the picture which her ingenuous avowals, and simple details, offered to the mental view of Juliet, presented to her a new sight of human life; but a sight from which she turned with equal sadness and