160 ANOTHER OLD ACQUAINTANCE.

was not prepared—the happiness of his life depended
upon his marriage with Williams's sister—he would
not speak of her in any other character than as his
sister ; he defied him, before Heaven, to deny that
she was so, or that her father was other than his. He
was so firm, so much in earnest, that Williams
quailed before him. Life and death, he said, was in
his errand, and he would not be trifled with. He
unly wanted to be eriabled to find them, and then
Williams might cast them off for ever—might dis-
own them—might lie before God and man; they
should from that day want neither friend nor support,
for he himself would maintain them. Williams told
him honestly that which he knew ; he had established
them as he hoped permanently in Birmingham, and
had secured to them a hundred a year by quarterly
payments. They had left Birmingham, however, and
gone to Bath, and after that he had incidentally
learned they were in London, where the father had
opened some kind of tavern at the West End—a mad,
foolish scheme, said Williams, and that was honestly
allhe knew. Reynolds, on his part, knew as much,
which he related: he had traced them from town to
town, and at length to London, where, as was stated,
the father had been unwise enough to enter into some
sort of scheme, but not in a tavern or gaming-house,
in what was designed for a small respectable coffee -
house and news-room. He had had a stroke, however, ,
which incapacitated him from business. The whole
place was broken up—all was complete ruin—and
after that, he and his daughter seemed lost amid the
vastness of sorrow and disappointed hopes in London.
Reynolds was a man, physically and morally, with