house was broken into. Like the houses of many legal men, it lay in a dangerous and thinly-populated outskirt of the town, and was easily accessible to robbery. He was awakened by a noise: he started, and found himself in the grasp of two men. At the foot of the bed stood a female, raising a light, and her face, haggard with searing passions, and ghastly with the leprous whiteness of disease and approaching death, glared full upon him.
"It is now my turn," said the female, with a grin of scorn which Brandon himself might have envied—"you have cursed me, and I return the curse! You have told me that my child shall never name me but to blush. Fool! I triumph over you: you he shall never know to his dying-day! You have told me, that to my child and my child's child (a long transmission of execration), my name—the name of the wife you basely sold to ruin and to hell, should be left as a legacy of odium and shame! Man, you shall teach that child no farther lesson whatever: you shall know not whether he live or die, or have children to carry on your boasted race; or whether, if he have,
