as his betters.'

Having therefore such an aversion to a halter, no wonder that Kiddy should be so affronted at a direct proposal from Standfast to commit an act for which, had it been discovered, he must have been hanged; nor was it an unnatural transition, fond as he had been of that fun called human misery, to see, all of a sudden, that he had delighted in it a little too much; but as, turn which way he would, he was in such a situation that he could not help imposing upon somebody, he covered his hypocrisy with the veil of religion, to rub off slighter sins, and those that bore too heavy on his recollection, he drowned in a dram; for, said Kiddy,
'though every coge is a nail in my coffin, if I do but repent before I am put into it, the grim jockies may screw me up and welcome.'

To shew however the prevalence of custom upon human nature, Kiddy very little considered that in the midst of his repentance, he was accessary to a fraud of great magnitude, namely, the keeping

Charles out of his fortune: nor would he, in all probability, ever have taken any steps to restore him to his right, had not this laudable conduct, as we have seen, been suggested to him by Emma, through Swash; nor even then, had not the measures to be taken involved in them a positive necessity of imposing upon Tadpole. This last imposition however, being on the side of honour and virtue, Kiddy began to feel, that however it might be clever to be a rogue, it was more comfortable to be an honest man.
The repentance of Figgins, as the reader knows, was better confirmed, though, as there is weakness in every kind of wickedness, so it was certainly assisted by finding, in consequence of what dropt from Mrs. O'Shocknesy, that Standfast had himself perpetrated the very crime which he had vainly persuaded Flush to commit.
One moment more, and the reader shall know what this crime was, and also that it has been very often hinted to him.
It will be recollected that Standfast did not accompany Mrs. O'Shocknesy into Warwickshire, probably as he was grown remarkably hipped,

owing to his being led by his lady the life of a dog, as Jerry Sneak calls it; and, as he was eternally tortured with his own reflections, he might be afraid of ghosts. I have said they were driven to the verge of poverty, from which nothing could relieve them but the death of