not yet free from her enemies.  They have the power of falsifying her to her lover.  The thought fills her bosom with sad emotions.  Strong in the consciousness of her virtue, she feels how weak she is in the walks of the worldly.  Her persecutors are guilty, but being all-powerful may seek in still further damaging her character, a means of shielding themselves from merited retribution.  It is the natural expedient of bad men in power to fasten crime upon the weak they have injured.

Only a few days have to elapse, then, and Maria will be face to face with him in whom her fondest hopes have found refuge; but even in those few days it will be our duty to show how much injury may be inflicted upon the weak by the powerful.

The old Antiquary observes the change that has come so suddenly over Maria’s feelings, but his entreaties fail to elicit the cause.  Shall she return to the house made doubtful by its frail occupants; or shall she crave the jailer’s permission to let her remain and share her father’s cell?  Ah! solicitude for her father settles the question.  The alternative may increase his apprehensions, and with them his sufferings.  Night comes on; she kisses him, bids him a fond adieu, and with an aching heart returns to the house that has brought so much scandal upon her.

On reaching the door she finds the house turned into a bivouac of revelry; her own chamber is invaded, and young men and women are making night jubilant over Champagne and cigars.  Mr. Keepum and the Hon. Mr. Snivel are prominent among the carousers; and both are hectic of dissipation.  Shall she flee back to the prison?  Shall she go cast herself at the mercy of the keeper?  As she is about following the thought with the act, she is seized rudely by the arms, dragged into the scene of carousal, and made the object of coarse jokes.  One insists that she must come forward and drink; another holds an effervescing glass to her lips; a third says he regards her modesty out of place, and demands that she drown it with mellowing drinks.  The almost helpless girl shrieks, and struggles to free herself from the grasp of her enemies.  Mr. Snivel, thinking it highly improper that such cries go free, catches her in his arms, and places his hand over her mouth.  “Caught among queer birds at last,” he says, throwing an insidious wink at Keepum.  “Will flock together, eh?”

As if suddenly invested with herculean strength, Maria hurls the ruffian from her, and lays him prostrate on the floor.  In his fall the table is overset, and bottles, decanters and sundry cut glass accompaniments, are spread in a confused mass on the floor.  Suddenly Mr. Keepum extinguishes the lights.  This is the signal for a scene of uproar and confusion we leave the reader to picture in his imagination.  The cry of “murder” is followed quickly by the cry of “watch, watch!” and when the guardmen appear, which they are not long in doing, it is seen that the very chivalric gentlemen have taken themselves off-left, as a prey for the guard, only Maria and three frail females.