not that letter fall into your hands? Did not you read it?"

"For God's sake, sir, turn me out of your house. Punish me in some way
or other, that I may forgive myself. I am a foolish, wicked, despicable
wretch. I confess, sir, I did read the letter."

"And how dared you read it? It was indeed very wrong of you. But we will
talk of that by and by. Well, and what did you say to the letter? You
know it seems, that Hawkins was hanged."

"I say, sir? why it went to my heart to read it. I say, as I said the
day before yesterday, that when I see a man of so much principle
afterwards deliberately proceeding to the very worst of crimes, I can
scarcely bear to think of it."

"That is what you say? It seems too you know--accursed
remembrance!--that I was accused of this crime?"

I was silent.

"Well, sir. You know too, perhaps, that from the hour the crime was
committed--yes, sir, that was the date [and as he said this, there was
somewhat frightful, I had almost said diabolical, in his countenance]--I
have not had an hour's peace; I became changed from the happiest to the
most miserable thing that lives; sleep has fled from my eyes; joy has
been a stranger to my thoughts; and annihilation I should prefer a
thousand times to the being that I am. As soon as I was capable of a
choice, I chose honour and the esteem of mankind as a good I preferred
to all others. You know, it seems, in how many ways my ambition has been
disappointed,--I do not thank Collins for having been the historian of