Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1886-06-03

enough out OF my aunt during her lifetime
We parted In anger, and / never met them
again.
~ went TO London, and got employment
In wlne-merchants Office at salary Of
eighty pounds per annum. My chief was a
sordid, Grabbed old money-grubber; but he
had 'one fair daughter, and her loved from
the first day saw her. There was nothing
strange in that for Alice Willoughby was
the fairest sweetest woman l ever knew !;
but the odd thing was that she should love
me In retun-for had nothing attractive In
me. was poor, unknown, a shy, awkward,
commonplace boy-and yet she loved me
my pretty Alice! She had of course many
other suitors, one OF them an Opulent mer-
chant and shp-broker, whom her father was
very anxious she should marry; and, when
he discovered the secret of our attachment,
his wrath knew no bounds, and he drove me
with coarse contumely from his services
did not mind much. for carried with me his
daughters heart and her promise 10 be true
at all costs. | looked about me for new EN-
ployment, and fell upon my feet in way
most uneXpected-got q clerkship at one
hundred and eighty pounds per annum In a
new insurance-otfice started on principles
which promised to make every shareholders
fortune in few years. l at once invested
my five hundred pounds, and, after / had re-
ceived my first quarters salary, raised a hun
dred pounds on the security of my prospects,
furnished modest little cottage at Gambler
well, and persuaded Alice to elope and mar
ry me, for she was in trouble, as her father
was pressing her sair' to marry the man of
his choice.
"FOr fewmOnths after this we were Sc
renely happy, though my dear wife fretted a
good deal because of the estrangement from
her father, who refused ever TO receive me as
a son-n-law. tried to console her, tried
also to keep from her the clouds which i saw
already gathering OH the luckless horizon Of
my life. l had just three months of sun
shine, and before | was year married the
crash which had been tremblingly expect
ing came suddenly. The insurance-company
burst up-it was nothing more than fraudu-
lent bubble-the board of influential directors
vanished into space, and three of the leading
men decamped with the remnant of princi-
pal invested by me and other gulls of my
kind. i md another wretched clerk, found
clnging helplessly To the wreck, were cast
into prison as aders and abettors of the
fraud: my furniture was seized by indignant
creditors; and my poor wife, in a delicate
state of health found herself standing alone,
unprotected and utterly penniless, in the
streets of London.
AT this crisis had TO make the bitterest
appeal think il could be any mans fate to
make had TO write and ask her father to
shelter her until was free lie did so; and,
when some time later the law decreed that
was pitifu dupe, not brazen accomplice.
he sent for me and offered me hundred
pounds to emigrate at once TO the Colonies,
promising 10 support my wife and child until
| had made sufficient money, to keep those
dependent OH me from the gates of the work
house. He spoke with cruel temperatures
which cut me like knife, for there was rea-
son i'm what he said.
"'With the ruin, the misery. the almost
hopeless blight you have brought on the
head of my dear daughter, the only being 1
love in the world. do not reproach you now,
lIeyand; leave that to your own conscience.
Ii is pretty clear, | think, that there is no
opening for talents of your kind in the
crowded fields of BritisS commerce; but the
golden veins of New South Wales lie free be-
fore you; you may be more lucky with the
pick-axe than with the quill. l now give
you the means of making a struggle for hon
est independence; let me see what there is in
you. cave your poor wife here In peace
with me. and, when you have a clear five
thousand To invest as provision for her,
then come home and claim her from me. But
remember thiS-if YOU linger on here, even
month more, not penny will you ever get
from me- not day longer will l shelter your
wife and child; SO make your choice at once
what choice had !? / took the money,
then knelt by my wife'S bedside one Christ
mas Day ten year, ago, and kissed her and
ny little week-old daughter for the last time;
but Alice did not know of my departure un-
til | had landed at Melbourne. | set TO work
at once; and fate, which had used me so
cruelty, seemed to favor me from the very
first day landed on your friendly soil, IT.
wing
~ proSpered steadily, surely; l labored
night and DAY with an intentneSs, q single
ness of purpose that ensured success. i
denied myself the smallest relaxation, the
lightest pleasure, for was not working for
the ransom of all loved on earth? fell in
luckily with young fellow having the same
purpose as myself the younger son OF an
English nobleman, who wanted to make
enough money to marry the girl he loved in
England. We started farming together, and
increased our stock monthly. Towards the
end of three years had about two thousand
five hundred pounds. correspondent regu-
larly with MY wife; but begged of her not
to let her father know of my good luck, as
some instinct told me, Notwithstanding his
encouraging parting words, that he had given
me that hundred pounds only to send me to
the dogs among the scum of Western civiliza-
ton whittier was going. l wanted TO sur
prise and disappoint him personally.
1.-THE day of my triumph was nearer than
anticipated At the close of the third year
of my exile two Sydney capitalists, coming
down country from the gold-diggings, were
struck by the appearance of chain OF rock
running east of our run, and offered us forty
thousand for the freehold of the property.
Burk hesitated and talked Of working II
himself but, when he ascertaned that 1t
was copper, not gold, they hoped to find In
the granite, he gave in, we closed with the
offer. A month later found me at Melbourne
with something like twenty-three thousand
pounds in gold, paper, and uncut diamonds
packed into an iron safe, which I-cOnsum-
mate idiot !-purposed carrying across the
ocean with me, needless of expostulation OF
| advice. / wanted to lay my royal store be-
fore the gloatng gold-worshipping eyes OF
my hated father-in-law. i took every pre-
caution, as thought; but the very night be.
fore was to sail was stabbed in bed and
| every farthing possessed carried off by q
| gang of rufilans who had been tracking me
for more than fortnight
IL lay at deaths door for nearly a month
and, when recovered 1 knew that all search
all pursuit was in vain-that the money fol
which 1 had toiled with the sweat of my
brow, the price of peace, of hope, Of love,
was gone from me for ever. Fate seemed toe
cruel; l. could no longer believe in Provi
dence One day crawled to the end Of 9
| chain Of efaan crarnv rocks and fhraw nv