The novels of Charles Brockden Brown, consisting of Wieland;or, The transformation. Arthur Mervyn; or, Memoirs of the year 1793. Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a sleep-walker. Jane Talbot. Ormond; or, The secret witness. Clara Howard; or, The enthusiasm of love. With a memoir of the author.

THE SECRET WITNESS.

97

and she would be admitted. In the present state of her
affairs, this delay was peculiarly unwelcome. At breakfast, her suspense and anxieties would not allow her to eat
a morsel, and, when the hour approached, she prepared
herself for a new attempt.
As she went out, she met at the door a person whom
she recognised, and whose office she knew to be that of
a constable. Constantia had exercised, in her present
narrow sphere, that beneficence which she had formerly
exerted in a larger. There was nothing, consistent with
her slender means, that she did not willingly perform
for the service of others. She had not been sparing of
consolation and personal aid in many cases of personal
distress that had occurred ini her neighbourhood. Hence,
as far as she was known she was reverenced.
The wife of their present visitant had experienced her
succour and sympathy on occasion of the death of a favourite child. The man, notwithstanding his office, was
not of a rugged or ungrateful temper. The task that
was now imposed upon him he undertook with extreme
reluctance. He was somewhat reconciled to it by the
reflection that another might not perform it with that
gentleness and lenity which he found in himself a disposition to exercise on all occasions, but particularly on the
present.
She easily guessed at his business, and, having greeted
him with the utmost friendliness, returned with him into
the house. She endeavoured to remove the embarrassment that hung about him, but in vain. Having levied
what the law very properly calls a distress, he proceeded,
after much hesitation, to inform Dudley that he was
charged with a message from a magistrate, summoning
him to come forthwith and account for having a forged
bank-note in his possession.
M'Crea had given no intimation of this. The painful
surprise that it produced soon yielded to a just view of
this affair. Temporary inconvenience and vexation was
all that could be dreaded from it. Mr. Dudley hated to
be seen or known. He usually walked out in the dusk
of the evening, but limited his perambulations to a short
space. At all other times he was obstinately recluse.