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Chancery Court, in which case the offending party would probably find himself com mitted to prison for contempt of court, until such time as he purged his contempt by exe cuting a proper settlement of her fortune. To speak seriously, I do not think sufficient precautions are taken in the matter of issu ing marriage licenses to make assurance of the facts sworn to on making the applica tion. But I am writing a story of my own pro fessional experience, not a treatise on the deficiencies of the English marriage laws. One morning about thirty years ago, there was considerable excitement in Coburg House, a well-known millinery store in Georgetown. Miss Constance Morgan, the prettiest girl employed in that large estab lishment, was missing, and no one knew where she had gone to. I had known her almost from her infancy; her mother was the widow of a clergyman who had died young, leaving his wife and little daughter, Connie, as she was called, almost entirely unprovided for. The mother had faced the world brave ly, and, being clever with her needle, had succeeded in driving the wolf of starvation from the door, and later on had made money enough to give little Connie a fairly good education; then death knocked at the door and claimed the mother, and Connie was left on her own resources, without any near rela tive to take care of her, at the early age of sixteen. But she had all her mother's spirit, as well as her deftness for plying the needle, and, young as she was, she made application to the heads of Coburg House, and was taken in as an assistant in that house. Four years afterwards she mysteriously disap peared from Georgetown, first, however, leaving a letter for me to say that, though she was leaving without calling to see me, she could never forget all my kindness to her mother and to herself (poor girl, there was little I had done to thank me for), and that she would write to me before long to tell me where she was, and what she was doing. This was not very satisfactory; she had

grown up to be a very lovely young lady, and I feared that her very beauty might prove a snare to her; but so far as I knew, her conduct had always been excellent, and her demeanor was always modest and quiet. So all I could do was to call on the head of Coburg House, show him the letter so as to stop scandal, and wait for the next news of her, and hope for the best in the meantime. One Sunday morning shortly after this I was seized with an unaccountable impulse to take a walk over the hills which overhang1 Georgetown, to the pretty village of Compton, of which a kind old friend and client, Archdeacon Harrison, was the rector. I timed my walk so as to reach the little church, one of the architectural gems of the county, in time for the morning service. I noticed at once that my old friend looked Ш and feeble, his voice, usually crisp and firm, faltered, and at last he came to a dead stop: then rising in his place and speaking with difficulty, he told his little flock that he was ill and unable to continue the service, and asked them to go home and offer up their prayers ior their afflicted minister. I has tened forward, and helped him to leave the church, and in the vestry, his daughter (the ministering angel of the parish ever since her mother's death a few years previously), helped him to disrobe, and between us we got him safely into his library at the rec tory, and I mounted on one of his horses as fast as I could to summon his medical at tendant from Georgetown. There was no time for asking questions, but I learned from his daughter that he had that morning re ceived a letter which had caused him great trouble. The doctor called at my house on his return, and told me that the good old archdeacon had had some slight seizure, which had now passed off leaving no cause for immediate anxiety, though there might be danger of another and more serious at tack if any sudden excitement of mind should occur, of which he had warned Miss Harrison, so nothing more remained to be done at present, and that there was no occa-