I am really concerned and disappointed that your first was so soon followed by one so contrary to it.

The shocking letter you mention, which your friends withhold from you, is indeed from me.  They may now, I see, show you any thing.  Ask them, then, for that letter, if you think it worth while to read aught about the true mother of your mind.

***

I will suppose that thou hast just read the letter thou callest shocking, and which I intended to be so.  And let me ask what thou thinkest of it?  Dost thou not tremble at the horrors the vilest of women labours with, on the apprehensions of death, and future judgment?—­How sit the reflections that must have been raised by the perusal of this letter upon thy yet unclosed eyelet-holes?  Will not some serious thoughts mingle with thy melilot, and tear off the callus of thy mind, as that may flay the leather from thy back, and as thy epispastics may strip the parchment from thy plotting head?  If not, then indeed is thy conscience seared, and no hopes will lie for thee.

[Mr. Belford then gives an account of the wretched Sinclair’s terrible
      exit, which he had just then received.]

If this move thee not, I have news to acquaint thee with, of another dismal catastrophe that is but within this hour come to my ear, of another of thy blessed agents.  Thy Tomlinson!—­Dying, and, in all probability, before this can reach thee, dead, in Maidstone gaol.  As thou sayest in thy first letter, something strangely retributive seems to be working.

This is his case.  He was at the head of a gang of smugglers, endeavouring to carry off run goods, landed last Tuesday, when a party of dragoons came up with them in the evening.  Some of his comrades fled.  M’Donald, being surrounded, attempted to fight his way through, and wounded his man; but having received a shot in his neck, and being cut deeply in the head by a broad-sword, he fell from his horse, was taken, and carried to Maidstone gaol:  and there my informant left him, just dying, and assured of hanging if he recover.

Absolutely destitute, he got a kinsman of his to apply to me, and, if in town, to the rest of the confraternity, for something, not to support him was the word, (for he expected not to live till the fellow returned,) but to bury him.

I never employed him but once, and then he ruined my project.  I now thank Heaven that he did.  But I sent him five guineas, and promised him more, as from you, and Mowbray, and Tourville, if he live a few days, or to take his trial.  And I put it upon you to make further inquiry of him, and to give him what you think fit.

His messenger tells me that he is very penitent; that he weeps continually.  He cries out, that he has been the vilest of men:  yet palliates, that his necessities made him worse than he should otherwise have been; [an excuse which none of us can plead:] but that which touches him most of all, is a vile imposture he was put upon, to serve a certain gentleman of fortune to the ruin of the most excellent woman that ever lived; and who, he had heard, was dead of grief.