And with these words, she retreated.  But her prayer was never answered, so far as man can judge of heaven’s mysterious ways.  The conviction settled down and down into his heart, that that apparently simple affair of killing a bird—­which, even with the aggravation of all the cruelty exhibited by the thoughtless, yet certainly pitiless youth, is so apt to be viewed carelessly, or only with an avowal of disapprobation—­which, if too much insisted on as an act to be taken up by superior retribution, is more apt still to be laughed at—­was the cause of all the ills that had befallen him.  The diamond eyes proved to him no fancy.  But for all this, we are afforded, by what subsequently occurred, some means of explanation, which will be greedily laid hold of by minute philosophers.  Even then it was to have been feared that the seeds of consumption had been deposited in favourable soil.  In our difficulties about explanations of mental phenomena, we readily flee to diseases of the body, which, after all, only removes the mystery a step or two back in the dark.

It remains for me to add some words of personal experience.  A considerable period after these occurrences, I had occasion—­by a connection with a medium through which Dewhurst received from his father, whose fortunes had in the meantime failed, a petty allowance—­to be the bearer to him, now liberated, of a quarter’s payment.  I forget the part of the town where I found him, but I have a distinct remembrance of the room.  It was a garret, almost entirely empty.  He was lying on a kind of bed spread upon the floor.  There was a small grate, with a handful of red cinders in it; only one chair, and a pot or pan or two.  There was a woman moving between him and the fireplace, as if she had been preparing some warm drink or medicine of some kind for him.  I did not know then, but I knew afterwards, that that woman was she who called upon him in prison, and deposited the small bottle of wine.  Her love for him had always overcome any of those feelings of enmity, or something stronger, generally deemed so natural in one who has been robbed of her dearest treasure, and ruined.  She alone had indeed not assumed the diamond eyes.  The diamonds were elsewhere,—­yea, in her heart, where she nourished pity for him who had so cruelly deserted her, and left her to a fate so common, and requiring only a hint to be understood by those who know the nature of women.  After he had got out of prison, she sought him out, got the room for him, collected the paltry articles, procured food for him, and continued to nurse him till his death, with all the tenderness of a lover who had not only not been cast off, but cherished.  He betrayed the ordinary symptoms of consumption, and the few words he muttered were those of thanks.  I think he was buried in the Canongate Churchyard.

DAVID LORIMER.

  “There is a history in all men’s lives.”—­SHAKSPEARE.