He called here on his way back, after he had been to Bedlam to visit poor Mrs.Sheppard." "Jack's mother ?" exclaimed the young man.

"Gracious Heaven!--is she the inmate of a mad-house ?" "She is, Sir," answered the woollen-draper, sadly, "driven there by her son's misconduct.

Alas! that the punishment of his offences should fall on her head.

Poor soul! she nearly died when she heard he had robbed his master; and it might have been well if she had done so, for she never afterwards recovered her reason.

She rambles continually about Jack, and her husband, and that wretch Jonathan, to whom, as far as can be gathered from her wild ravings, she attributes all her misery.