“He laid his finger on my shoulder, and added still with a gentle and significant smile, ’I am in possession of your secret, and I say so, to take you merely as far as I am concerned, out of a false, and myself out of a somewhat painful position.  It would be embarrassing to me, for instance, to meet and treat you as that which you are not, knowing as I do what you are; and it will relieve you from the difficulty of sustaining a part that is not your own, at least so far as I am concerned.’

“‘I certainly perceive,’ I replied, ’that you are in possession of that, which in this country, I thought known only to myself and another.’

“‘Your secret,’ he said emphatically, ‘shall be inviolable.’

“’I feel it, my good sir,’I replied, ’and now, let me ask, on what part of the continent did we meet?’

“Let it suffice to say here, that he brought himself distinctly to my memory, through the medium of a very kind office performed for a friend of mine, who, at the time, stood in circumstances not only of difficulty, but of considerable personal danger.

“Having viewed the manufactory, which is somewhat of a novelty in this immediate locality, we were about to take our leave, when four men, evidently strangers, and each remarkable for that hardened and insolent look which begets suspicion at a glance, now entered the concern with an air of ruffian authority, and with all the offensive forms of which the law is capable, laid on an execution, to the amount of fourteen hundred pounds.

“Old M’Loughlin received the intelligence, and witnessed the proceedings, with a smile, in which there was something that struck me as being peculiarly manly and independent.

“‘This,’ said he, ’although coming from a quarter that I deemed to be friendly, is the heaviest blow, connected with our business, that we have received yet.  Still, gentlemen,’ he proceeded, addressing Father Roche and myself, ’I trust it won’t signify—­a mere passing embarrassment.  This manufactory, as you may perceive, complete through all its machinery, which is of the very best and costliest description, together with the property in it, is worth five times the amount of the execution.’

“‘Yes, but you forget,’ replied the leading ruffian, ’that property under an execution isn’t to be judged by its real value.  In general it doesn’t bring one-tenth, no, nor one-fifteenth of its true value, when auctioned out, as it will be, under a writ.’

“‘Ay, by Jabers,’ said another of them, ‘an’ what’s better still, you forget that your lease is expired, and that Lord Cumber has sent over word for you not to get a renewal—­nor Harman either.’

“‘Is this true?’ I inquired of Father Roche; ’do you imagine it to be possible?’

“‘That fellow is bad authority for anything,’ he replied, ’but I fear that in this Point, he is too correct.  However, let us ask M’Loughlin himself, who, certainly, has the best right to know.’