have patience before I can at all explain myself to your entire satisfaction." "Say what you please, my dear girl, say what you please," uttered the fisher, waving his hand as if for her to proceed, "for, shiver my top-sails, if I would listen to any one else with half the pleasure, and I could give myself a sound drubbing for having said a word to vex so sweet a little soul as I know you to be. But, my Jessy, my poor Jessy!-go on, my dear girl, go on,-I won't interrupt you again, I promise you. Come dearest, what are you going to say?" "I was going to say, Sir," cried Agatha, hardly able to resist smiling at the transitions which the poor fisher had made, of asperity to kindness, and petulance to his own natural sweetness of temper, "that when your humanity prompted you to offer an asylum beneath your roof to a poor fatherless girl, that she was bound, not only in gratitude and affection to you, but to every member of your family, to preserve the same principle and feeling by conscientiously discharging her duty, and what does that duty tell me, Sir?-that the peace, the happiness, the honour, the welfare of your children should be as dear to me as my own, and that when I behold any evil pending on them, that I could by any means avert, that I would fearlessly throw myself between that and them, let whatever be the consequence.-Sir, this duty I have performed,—one of your children was in danger of a threatened evil-it was Jessy." "Jessy!" exclaimed the fisher, in the utmost astonishment. "Yes, Jessy," repeated Agatha, "it was Jessy, over whose innocent head this evil was waving;-it was my fortunate destiny to perceive that evil in time to warn her of it ;-I did not wring the secret from her heart, but she reposed it in mine! Now, Sir, hear my fixed, my unalterable resolution, never to reveal this secret, till permitted by her to do so, though I lose, what I prize dearer than existence, the affection, the esteem, the protection of my benefactor. Cease to urge or importune me again on this subject, but be satisfied, that your daughter is now safe from being perverted from her duty, and that a short time will restore her to her former health and cheerfulness; her form has indeed chang ed, but unchanged and incorruptible are her principles,—chaste and pure as holy angels. Thus far have I ventured to explain the nature of her late despondency, but no farther; and, if indeed you do regard the little good I still can do in this mysterious business, remember that your silence only can sign the passport to my duty." The fisher continued gazing at Agatha for many minutes after she had ceased speaking, with a mixture of astonishment and concorn, which almost deprived him of the power of utterance, in which admiration of her exemplary conduct seemed to have no small share; while the communication he had received relative to his beloved child, had so powerfully wrought upon his feelings as to occasion him to burst into an involuntary agony of tears, and Agatha, imagining that he was not yet fully satisfied with the explanation sho had given him, and was still angry with her, exclaimed, "Speak to me, Sir, do but speak to me; your silence breaks my heart, tell me that I am justified in your opinion, and I care not what else betides me." "Justified," at length uttered the fisher, regarding her with a look of the tenderest emotion," shiver my top-sails, you are an angel! yes, Agatha Singleton, you are an angel, and blessed be the hour that I brought you within these doors. I have let my girls do just what they please with me, but my Jessy was the pride of my heart, and had she fallen into any temptation, I should never have held my head up again; but I will believe you, Agatha, Jessy is still innocent, and she droops because some faithless lover has deceived her, but, the scoundrel, the infernal scoundrel, never let me know his name Agatha,-never let me hear his name pronounced in my presence, or belike I may——————yes, I would pulverize him into atoms!—what, to creep into the bosom of my blooming rosebud, and like a vile reptile, only to destroy its sweets! Zounds, I shall go mad!-Oh, Jessy, Jessy, better had these grey hairs followed thee to thy grave, for then, my darling, I know thou wouldst have been an angel translated to the skies." "And Jessy is an angel still," cried Agatha, dreadfully alarm ed at the excessive agitation she beheld in the countenance of her protector; "I will stake my life on Jessy's innocence, and I beseech you, Sir, to calm and moderate these transports; by all my hopes of happiness hereafter, Jessy is innocent, and free from censure, and will soon be happy again in a father's smiles, be but silent, on that alone depends her restoration to health and peace." "Well, well, I will be silent," cried the fisher, "though shiver my top-sails, it would be a hard matter, if I knew who it was that but, come, dearest, I will distress thee no longer, and will say nothing more about it; but pray watch over my darling, bid her not weep, and sigh, and moap so; tell her it will break her father's heart, to see her pine,-do this, love, as often as you can, and, may angels bless you! "Be assured that I will neglect nothing which can contribute to her welfare, and the peace of her father," answered Agatha; and leaving him considerably relieved from the apprehensions which had at first filled his mind on Jessy's account, she retired to her own chamber, to contemplate the delicate situation in which she now stood in the fisher's family, and the little prospect there was for her enjoying any tranquillity again, beneath a roof, the happiness of which was already broken in upon by the insidious and base arts of a designing villain ! Still, however, Agatha forbore to repeat his name to his kinsman, on whom he had so artfully imposed, but to which it was scarcely possible to suppose that the fisher would long be blind; but Agatha, almost unerring in her judgment in all beside, was completely deceived in this respect; for so far from suspecting Leontine Craftly to be the cause of Jessy's unhappiness, or being at all instrumental in destroying the peace of his family, he believed Craftly to be as indifferent to Jessy as a stranger who had never crossed his threshhold, and that he thought no more for Olive than the mere regard which was attached to their being relatives on his mother's side. In short, the fisher looked higher than to Leontine Craftly for a matrimonial connection in his family; for though he loved him as a kinsman, and would probably do much to serve him, yet for a husband to either of his daughters, he would proudly have rejected any overtures which would have been made of the kind; and how was it morally possible for the fisher to have even guessed at an attachment subsisting between Leontine and his daughter Jessy? for never had he observed the slightest partiality on either side. Jessy hardly addressed any conversation to Leontine, and Leontine seldom exchanged a syllable with Jessy, except on the most general and indifferent subjects, and then it was always in the presence of others; and of Olive's flightiness with her kinsman, the fisher thought nothing, since he believed she would do the same with any other young man who had been so familiarly brought up with her. Thus were all the little flirtations which were carried on between them wholly unnoticed, or if noticed, only laughed at, by a too indulgent father. Meanwhile the insidious Craftly gradually stole into the good graces of his unsuspecting kinsman, who at length, reposing the utmost confidence in the seeming semblance of so many virtuous traits of character and disposition, believed that few young men were possessed of such integrity and honourable principles as his kinsman, and this confidence had increased rather than diminished with increasing years. It would therefore have been no easy matter to have convinced the warm-hearted fisher, that Craftly was a designing hypocrite, much less that he could be the seducer of one or both of his children, had opportunity and his insidious arts succeeded to accomplish his base and dishonourable purposes. But of Craftly the confiding fisher thought not, when at the de-.parture of Agatha, he ransacked his memory to guess at the serpent who had undermined the happiness of his sweet Jessy. There were few young men who had the privilege of being constant visiters at Herring Dale, besides Craftly and Russel, whose characters and principles would not stand the test of the most scrupulous inquiry, and which were not fully established in the neighbourhood of Cromer, and the fisher was well assured that none of those would presume to approach his daughters with a dishonourable passion. "Well, then, who was this serpent, whose wily tongue had stung the heart of his Jessy? Agatha Singleton could answer that question, but she had given her reasons why she was not permitted to do so; they were strange-they were mysterious! for it was by the heaven-directed agency of Agatha that Jessy had been warned of her fate; it was plain then, that the perfidious lover of Jessy was not unknown to Miss Singleton; but, unable to form the remotest conjecture that could authorize him to suspect any one who was intimate at the Dale, he suspended his judgment till some conclusive evidence might assist him in discovering the villain. CHAPTER XV. "Oh, love! what is it in this world of our's As those who dote on odours pluck the flowers And place them on their breast-but place to die.- TIME, which brings all things, all seasons, and all changes to an end, whether sweet or sour, was rapidly advancing to that, which was annually calculated by the inhabitants of Cromer for the period of a rich and luxuriant harvest, all their own, because they had looked forward to it with many an anxious sigh, and the deprivation of many a pleasure, which their scanty means could not afford; during the long and tedious reign of winter, dried fish, and a very moderate supply of inferior herrings, with a less proportion of other food, had been the subsistence of numerous poor families, who had drained their little store, gained by hard labour, in order to prepare ready furnished apartments in their houses, for the reception and accommodation of the yearly visiters and sea-bathers, who never failed to resort to their coast on the approach of summer; and if this poor, honest, and industrious race of people were then rewarded for the sacrifices which they had so patiently endured throughout a long and wintry season, who would |