your life?'

It is impossible to describe the pleasure with which Natura found his
father was apprized of this affair, without being obliged to relate it
himself, as he was now determined to have done:--all his obduracy
being now intirely vanquished, and converted into the most tender,
affectionate, and dutiful submission.

'Can there be a worse?' replied he, renewing his embraces, 'and can
you know it, and yet vouchsafe to look on me as your son!'--'If your
penitence be sincere,' said the good old gentleman, 'I neither can,
nor ought refuse to pardon all:--but rise,' continued he, 'and freely
give this worthy friend and myself, the satisfaction we require;--a
full confession of all your misbehaviour, is the only attonement you
can make, and that I can expect from you:--remember I have signed your
pardon for all that is past, but shall not include in it any future
acts of disobedience, among which, dissimulation, evasion or
concealment, in what I demand to be laid open, I shall look upon as of
the worst and most incorrigible kind.'

He needed not have laid so strong an injunction on the now truly
contrite Natura;--he disguised nothing of what he had done, even to
the mean arts of gaming, to which he had been obliged to have recourse
after his voluntary banishment from all his friends; and then painted
the horrors he conceived at the things he daily saw, and the despair
which had induced him to leave England, in such lively colours, that
not only his father, but the merchant, were affected by it, even to
the letting fall some tears.

But not to be too tedious in this part of my narration, never was