take it home with you,'--and hurried from the roof But when I had left the house, and was proceeding down the walk, she opened the window and called me back. It was only to say,--

`Bring it back when you have read it; and don't breathe a word of what it tells you to any living being--I trust to your honour.'

Before I could answer, she had closed the casement and turned away. I saw her cast herself back in the old oak chair, and cover her face with her hands. Her feelings had been wrought to a pitch that rendered it necessary to seek relief in tears.

Panting with eagerness, and struggling to suppress my hopes, I hurried home, and rushed upstairs to my room,--having first provided myself with a candle, though it was scarcely twilight yet,--then, shut and bolted the door, determined to tolerate no interruption, and sitting down before the table, opened out my prize and delivered myself up to its perusal--first, hastily turning over the leaves and snatching a sentence hem and there, and then, setting myself steadily to read it through.

I have it now before me; and though you could not, of course, peruse it with half the interest that I did, I know you would not be satisfied with an abbreviation of its contents, and you shall have the `whole, save, perhaps, a few passages here and there of merely temporal interest to the writer, or such as would serve to encumber the story rather than elucidate it, It begins somewhat abruptly, thus--but we will reserve its commencement for another chapter, and call it,--