started as if from a horrible dream; and after glancing wildly around, declared, in a broken voice, that he was innocent.

"Have you witnesses?" inquired the judge. "I have no friends," was the significant reply. "Have you nothing further to say, otherwise it becomes my duty to address the jury?"

The prisoner now seemed to be alive to his critical situa tion, and appeared about to address the court; but the confusion of his mind prevented him, and he ultimately declined saying any thing further. His lordship recapitulated, in a lucid manner, the evidence! and the jury, without leaving the dock, returned their verdict. While it was being recorded, the crowd assembled leaned forwards with looks of anxiety: they could hardly doubt its nature; but all felt that, while life or death was about to be pronounced, they could not too soon catch the accent of acquittal or condemnation.

The prisoner was extremely agitated; the colour on his cheek, like an incipient flash of lightning, just touched and vanished; his lip quivered; and his breathing, though rapid, was audible. When the clerk of the court rose, he fixed his gaze with a bewildered intensity on him; and by the heaving of his brea-t it seemned as if the spirit of life was struggling to escape. After an awful pause-which seemed in its duration a day to the unfortunate prisoner-the fatal word "guilty" was pronounced. All breathed freely; certainty brought relief, and to none more apparently than the wretched man in the dock. He raised his eyes to heaven, ejaculated a short prayer, and instantly resumed his wonted composure.

Sentence was passed in due form, and at twelve o'clock the ensuing day the executioner had to do his office. The awful fate which awaited him secured Owen no sympathy; his declarations of innocence were regarded as things of course; and, when the heart felt inclined to pity, the rising emotion was instantly quelled by reference to the victim of bis guilt, and the parental hearts his crime had lacerated. At the appointed hour the usual preparations had been completed; and, as the clock struck twelve, the prison bell solemnly announced to the inhabitants of Hereford that a criminal was about to die. The assembled multitude giew every moment more dense! and the confusion consequent upon such a

gathering was hushed to silence as the wretched object of their curiosity appeared beneath the fatal beam. At that moment a faint voice was heard at a distance; presently it became more distinct; and the rush of many persons intimated the approach of a disordered multitude. "He lives! he lives !" cried a womanly voice; and the crowd gave way, as a young female, with her dress disordered, rushed towards the officers of justice. It was the criminal's grand-daughter. She announced the astounding fact that the child, for whose supposed death her aged relative was about to die, still lived; and those who considered the girl crazed were quickly undeceived. A tall, shrewd-looking young man, bearing a wondering boy in his arms, and followed by a boisterous and impatient crowd, now presented himself, and said, Here is the boy!" "Who recognizes him?" demanded the sheriff. "I do," answered Mr. Wentworth, stepping from amidst the crowd, in the throng of which he had eagerly rushed to save the life of Poor Owen. The judge not having yet left the town a reprieve was forthwith obtained.

It appeared that, subsequent to receiving sentence, Owen's grand-daughter waited on him in his cell: she was accompanied by a fellow-servant, a native of Scotland, who, with the characteristic shrewdness of his countrymen, put several questions to the convict. From the answers he received he learnt that Owen had one enemy, a woman who resided in a secluded spot a few miles distant from Eden Dale. She, too, lived on alms, and her enmity arose from the preference every where given to her rival. She had repeatedly threatened him with her vengeance and it was barely possible she might have murdered the child, and disposed of his remains in the manner related. On this hint Andrew Gordon set forward to her hut she had deserted it three months before; but, by assiduous inquiry, he traced her to a Welsh mountain, ten miles distant, where he found her. "You have got a pretty little girl," said Andrew. Yes," was the sullen reply; but before she could utter another word Andrew had discovered that it was a boy. Conviction now flashed upon him the wretched woman in vain endeavoured to free heiself from his grasp; and, when carried before a magistrate, she confessed that, her little girl having died, she stole Master Wentworth; and, that she might not be suspected, contrived to

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implicate Poor Owen. for whom she entertained the deadliest hatred. The little fellow's clothes she partially burnt on his hearth, and subsequently deposited the body of her own daughter beneath the floor of his shed, when she understood that it was about to be demolished. The better to escape detection, she at first concealed the child, and afterwards removed to the Welsh mountains, where Andrew had detected her. The dead body was again exhumed, a coroner attended, and the surgeon now discovered that it was that of a female. These circumstances were brought to light just to avert the fate of Owen, who regarded his deliverance as little less than an interposition of the Divine Providence in his behalf.

The guilty cause of his sufferings received that measure of punishment which the law awarded her offence, and Andrew Gordon soon received what he so well merited-the band of Owen's grand-daughter.

Poor Owen spent the remainder of his days under Andrew's roof; and the shrewd Scotsman had sense enough to prize virtue and beauty, though they met in a maid of such humble origin.

A LAY OF THRIFT.

ADDRESSED TO A LADY OCCUPIED IN NEEDLE-WORK.

"All our praises why should lords engross ?"
Inquired the bard who sang the Man of Ross;
And I, though but a bardling in repute,
Would very gravely add a question to it-
Why all our rhymes should Fancy run away with,
Leaving Utility but few to play with?
Roses the poet will with pleasure sigh on,-
Ah! wherefore never on the dandelion!

The nightingales that die are straightway hid
Beneath the Muse's paper pyramid;

The lark, the wren too," have melodious tears ;"
But let the goose die, who of sonnets hears?
'Tis thus with man; we give unto the bard
The love full oft his betters are debarred;
Weep, if he tell us he is past his prime,
Forgetful that he says so for the rhyme;
Dote on the anger of the tuneful railer,
Never on that which moves his injured tailor :

To him who weaveth wreaths of verse we go,
Yet shrink from him that weaveth calico;
Though verse and calico agree, I say,

Since both are cheap and common-neither PAY!
Nor is the pleasure of poetic pains

That which consists in counting up their gains.
But to my moral wherefore, O Utility,

:

To thee is vowed Parnassian sterility?

I'll break the rule-the laurel crown I'll shift,
I'll pay Olympic honours unto THRIFT.

And wherefore not? Why, in rhymes pretty rich,
Should not the distich be for those who stitch?
If she who threads a dance our praise can wheedle?
Why not the nobler she who threads a needle?
Why should we dote, in our poetic dreams,
But on the seeming that sews up no seams?
Why love a pretty voice employed in hemming,
Ev'n whilst the hands that are so we're condemning?
Why should the moralist who teaches youth
To mend bad habits, be preferred, in sooth,
Before the sempstress, who for youth prepareth
New ones at once, and not the old repaireth?
O lady of the needle and the shears-
Thou very peerless one among thy peers!
I'd rather sit by thee, in the green light
Made by the beech-tree and the noonday bright,
Watching thy work box, and thy work maternal
Touched into beauty by such influence vernal,
Than be with some fair idler who rehearses,
In the same sunshine, Mr. Moore's best verses.
I loved not shows and spectacles of old,
But you, spectacled syren, have made bold
To change my tastes; and in like manner too
I am a convert to your wise opinion,
That melancholy's dire and drear dominion
(Except in the incorrigible few)

Might be corrected-not by whip and beadle
But by a course of steel-I mean the needle.
But ah! what hear I? 'tis the dinner-bell—
Of your work, and my rhymes, the funeral knell ;
So for awhile, needle and pen, farewell.

NORMAN CASTLE;

A SPECIMEN OF OLD ROMANCE.

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BY M. L. B. AUTHOR OF QUITE GOOD ENOUGH."

Norham is grim, and grated close,
Hemm'd in by battlement and fosse,
And many a darksome tower.

Marmion.

"You'd better, Sir Knight, sleep in the village than at Norman Castle; that's a place nobody cares to see much of by day, and I've heard tell

My worthy friend," replied Sir Edgar, "your words only excite my curiosity, and set an edge upon my courage. Should one of my profession, think you, be daunted by the prospect of dungeons, or by meeting face to face the Baron of Waltham? who is

"God save your worship, he is what I care not here to name, since many an honest fellow has been clean spirited away, and never seen more, who ouly lifted up his voice against my lord, miles distant from him and Norman Castle." Well, well, my good friend, the character you give

him

"Heaven bless your honor, don't say the character I give him, or I'm a dead man before the week is out; no, no, the baron's an angel of light, if I, Tobias Baldock, am to speak to his good qualities."

"Good Toby, give me a guide to the castle, and let me be off."

You'll get no guide, fair sir, from amongst us to-night," returned Master Baldock; "but an' you ride straight through the village, take the turn to the right, just after you've passed the wood, then the second turn to the left, then another turn to the right, and two more turns to the left, you cannot miss Castle Norman; and so, Sir Knight, speed you, and farewell."

"Thanks, and farewell, friend," cried Sir Edgar, riding off, "had I but a fourthling in my pouch it should be thine for thy civility."

"Good troth," cried Toby, staring after him, "had I had L. 37. 1.