I soothed my cousin in the best manner I could, consistenly with justice: yet I told him, that his repentance must arise from his judgment, as well as from his sufferings; and that he would have less reason for regretting the unhappy situation to which he had reduced himself, if the latter brought him to a right sense of his errors. I was solicitous, Dr. Bart-lett, for the sake of his own peace of mind, that he should fall into a proper train of thinking: but I told him, that preachment was no more my intention, than recrimination.

I have two hands to one tongue, my cousin, said I; and the latter I use not but to tell you, that both the former are cordially at your service. You have considered this matter well, no doubt, added I: can you propose to me any means of retrieving your affairs?

There is, said he, one way. It would do every-thing for me: but I am afraid of mentioning it to you.

If it be a just way, fear not. If it be any-thing I can do for you, out of my own single purse, without asking any second or third person to contribute to it, command me He hesitated.

If it be any-thing, my cousin, said I, that you think I ought not, in justice, in honour, to comply with, do not, for your own sake, mention it. Let me see that your calamity has had a proper effect upon you. Let not the just man be sunk in the man in adversity; and then open your mind freely to me. He could not, he said, trust the mention of the expedient to me, till he had given it a further consideration.

Well, Sir, be pleased to remember, that I will never ask you to mention it; because I cannot doubt but you toil I, if, on consideration, you think it a/jro-per expedient.

When some friends, who came to visit me on my arrival, were gone, my cousin resumed the former subject: but he offered not to mention his expedient. I hope it was not, that he had a view to my Emily. I am very jealous for my Emily. If I thought poor Everard had but an imagination of retrieving his affairs by her fortune, nothing but his present cala-mity should hinder me from renouncing for ever my cousin.

I enquired particularly into the situation he was in; and if there were a likelihood of doing any-thing with the gamesters. But he could not give me room for such an expectation. I find he has lost all his estate to them, Dunton-farm excepted; which, having been much out of repair, is now fitting up for a new tenant; and will not, for three or four years to come, bring him in a clear fifty pounds a year.