chamber, and he received me in his odd cool and collected manner, as if no difference had ever been between us. He inquired first for my wife, and then for my children, one by one, adding, "But I reckon Mr. Lawrie Todd ha'n't o' late been progressing so top-gallant-sail proud."

I acknowledged it was true; and then told him how my circumstances were altered, and that I had come to consult him as to what should be done in such extremity.

"Well, I guess," said he, "the gentleman can't be particular: you must cut and run.” “Cut and run, Mr. Hoskins !"

"Yes; clear out!"

"How could you think I would do that? I have been always an honest man!"

"Well, that's noteable but is Mr. Lawrie

Todd agoing to pay a hundred cents to the dollar ?"

What could I answer to this? I shook head, and heaved a sorrowful sigh.

my

"I was a 'specting this," said he, " and ha' been a making my calculations 'bout it; for, I guess, the Squire has been erronous consi

derable: when I sees a man erronous in his calculations, by G-d! it makes me sick."

From this, it was plain that me and my affairs were causeway talk, and that it would not add to the repute of my prudence, if I went on struggling with such a powerful enemy as a farm of a barren and ungrateful soil. Before I had time, however, to make any answer, Mr. Hoskins resumed :

" I

guess, and if so be you can't clear out bekase of honesty, you should sell off your notions and the farm; and when you have paid all, or compounded, go into the bush a chopping."

“Then,” said I, with a heart greatly daunted, "you will not lend me two or three hundred dollars 'till I get things settled?”

"Not a stiver! that's plump; for Mr. Lawrie Todd would squash it all on that ere tarnation farm what's in Jersey state. That ere farm, I have heard for gospel, Squire, ha'n't never no capacity no more to raise garden-seeds, than the sole of the Devil's foot to grow watercresses."

“I'm a ruined man!" was all I could ejaculate.

"Well, I guess you be; and the sooner the gentleman goes on t'other tack the sooner he'll come to land, or I'm a Pagan, called Me-hal-aleel-hash-bash, and not Zerobabel L. Hoskins, what was christened so on mother's lap when father kept tavern at Lebanon."

"Then there is no hope of any help from you?" was the only answer I could make to this, as it seemed, unfeeling speech and ill-timed jocosity.

Squire," said he, "I ben't a thing to bray in a mortar, so thinks I myself; but I would be damneder than seven fools and a philosopher, seeing as how the team's smashed in a mudhole, if I lent a hand to right it, when I knows it ain't worth nothing at all of nobody's money. Let the gentleman go right away, and tumble his gear into cash; pay off, and then we can make our calculations for another spec. But I reckons, Squire, it be raising garden-seeds on a tarnation farm, in Jersey State, to talk 'bout help, when the business, by God! is necessitous—

look ye, and help could do no more good than any thing that can't."

Seeing I could make no better of it, I lifted my hat, and bade him good-day, wishing him better luck in his undertakings than I had met with in mine.

"Well, that should be, Squire," said he, as he shook hands with me; "for I a'n't so glorious of myself, as not to take no man's 'pinion but my own. 'Somesever, as the Squire's capsized, I pity's the gentleman, and mayhap have a friend's heart were the tide turned."

When I left the house, I could not but think Mr. Hoskins was a man of a forbidding manner; but the more I came to reflect soberly on what he had said, I discerned both prudence and good advice in his counsel. I thought, however, it would have been but civil, considering my humiliation, had he restrained the taunt at my self-sufficiency, the punishment of which was then as manifest as the contrition I felt, for it was deep and sincere.

CHAPTER IX.

"Man was made to mourn."

I RETURNED homeward very sad and grievously cast down, yet it was not a reasonable grief with which I was affected.

My situation had been long daily becoming worse, and there was not a chance within the scope of any probability that by perseverance the difficulties might be overcome. The advice of Mr. Hoskins pointed out the only way by which I could hope to escape from my unutterable anxieties, and I was determined to follow that advice "right away." Still, I could not shake off the sense of calamity, which, as it were, gnawed my heart.

What I felt is ever in my remembrance ter