300 The Leather Plater, 



after I learnt both their histories from John I-Iarrison, who appearer 

 to have known old Jack some twenty years before, when he kept a 

 small roadside inn, somewhere up in Yorkshire, and Harrison drove 

 one of the north country coaches that changed at his door 3 and I 

 will tell the tale as it was told to me. 



Annie's mother, the only child of one of the oldest and proudest 

 houses in tlie county, when a lovely girl of eighteen, eloped from 

 her father's house with a man whom she dearly loved — her inferior 

 in birth, it was true, but her equal in every other respect — whose 

 only fault consisted in his poverty. Six weeks after their marriage, 

 they both w rote to the father, praying for his forgiveness. That 

 father was a stern, unforgiving old man, and the reply he wrote to 

 his daughter's letter was, that as she had made her bed, so might 

 she lie upon it ; and, enclosing a cheque for one hundred pounds, 

 told her that he had now done with her for ever, and that the letter 

 he was now writing, was the last communication he would hold 

 with her in this world. And he kept his word. Two more letters 

 which the daughter wrote to him were returned unopened, and the 

 poor girl had not the heart to write another. Her husband, who 

 had unfortunately been brought up to no profession, but who had 

 been maintained by an old uncle, who was believed to be rich, now 

 apphed to that uncle for assistance. He was a great speculator in 

 railways, and such like. Just at that time a panic occurred among 

 all the speculators in England. Shares fell, the old man became 

 a bankrupt, and was obliged to retire to the continent, where he 

 lived for a few years upon a slender pittance doled out to him by 

 his creditors. 



After they were married, the young couple went up to London, 

 where the husband managed to eke out a slender subsistence, 

 sometimes as amanuensis, sometimes as contributor to the daily 

 papers. The poor girl was devotedly attached to her husband, and 

 although the privations which she had to undergo were such as she 

 had been little used to, she never complained. Two years after the 

 marriage little Annie was born, and six months after her birth, the 

 poor father, who had never been a strong man, and who was ill 



