The Cotton Factory Times. — 1887-07-22 (Manchester, Greater Manchester, England)

CHAPTER XIX.  QUICK WORK.  For the present, we shall leave Edward and Mabel to the enjoyment of their quiet happiness and of the calm sunshine with which their blended lives was for a period brightened. It was not long till Edward reached a moderate degree of success as an artist, and was pretty regularly employed in the execution of commissions fairly remunerative. The fruit of his labour, joiued to the two hundred pounds a-year which he inherited from his mother, was sufficient to maintain them in a plain, comfortable style, quite in accordance with their moderate ideas ot social ponition ; so they had no occasion to regret having preferred love and truth to mere worldly possessions. Job Dillon and Fanny West were also prosperous and contented in their wedded life. The eating-house :mid cook-shop business to which he had succeeded revived greatly under Mrs. Dillon's clever management; and the excellence of the articles in which they dealt becoming generally known, their establishment became popular and was well patronised. As the residence of Edward and Mabel was not far frOtn their shop, a close and kindly intercourse was 'maintained, which was rendered all the more rjoyable by a knowledge and recollection of past triakt. It seemed to thei rnv ham experience as if these trials had beca"ft4ll, surmounted and for over done wit:., and tliaeleresent peaceful happiness of thoir existence' woyild 'levet know such a sh-dOw of pain and sorrow as that which had once engin ouded them. But who can securely count on the hature? Who cari sfel r.nticipata peace and joy, when the evil thought, an bad passions of othei s are ever in action? Edward and Ziabel had  still their enemies, whose desires and interests sought their hurt. There was a time of tribulation to come, bringing heavier sorrow and more intense suffering than they had yet endured. That time, however, was not yet. Let them, therefore, enjoy their prcsout happiness to the full. The course of our story compels ns to leave them for a little to deal with the actions of other personages who have as yet been little more than introduced by name, but whose doings are fated to affect the future existence of Edward and Mabel to a tremendous extent. For it is the law of human life that its different phases of light and shade, its joy and sorrow, are produced by a single or cornbined agency of individual lives that are often wide  apart. When informed by Jonas Lynch how utterly their scheme had failed, and that his nephew had married Mabel Ashley, Colonel Marston's rage was tremendous. Not daring to commit the intelligence to writing, the lawyer undertook a special journey to Cumberland, and made the communication to the Colonel in his own dining-room. The mode in which the latter received it was sufficient to terrify  —„ Jonas, and make him repent most heartily Of having taken such a step. For some moments the Colonel sat glaring but dumb. Then, with a terrific roar, he sprang from his chair and clutched the lawyer's throat with a strangler's grip, foaming and cursing as he did so, and charged his writhing victim with flagrant treachery, roaring out that what had transpired was the work of Jonas himself, and that he had done it to make his stepdaughter mistress of Wortley Hall. It was not till Jonas grew black in the face, and the Colonel was within an ace of being hanged for his murder, that the latter allowed prudence to prevail over his passion so far as to release him; but the mark of that _  _ terrible grip Mr. Lynch did not get rid of for many a day. Indeed, for at least a quarter of an hour, it did not seem as if he would recover at all, so violent had been the compression of his windpipe, and the sight of his gasping alarmed his assailant so much that his ire was subdued, and he hurriedly applied