PUBLISHED BY F. GLEASON, FLAG OF OUR UNION OFFICE, MUSEUM BUILDING, TREMONT STREET. 11 Wall Street, Louisville, Ky. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, BY F. GLEASON, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. The author of the following story sits down to amuse both himself and his readers by weaving together such scenes and pictures as will form a truthful panorama of the events of a stirring and romantic period. Life will be depicted as his fancy hath reflected it, and the scene drawn and colored after nature herself. It will be his effort to engage the reader's curiosity and interest, and also to charm and delight him by those exhibitions of true feelings which his own heart has not unfrequently realized in itself. The two extremes of life created by poverty and riches will be depicted, and the extremes of virtue and vileness passed in review before the mind's eye. Loveliness and hideousness will be contrasted, that the former may be more rightly appreciated and the latter more abhorred. The promptings of pride and jealousy, and the teeming wiles of the heart will be recorded, and our story so set down as to interest without outraging sensibility or borrowing from the impossible. Thus much it seems proper for the author to say, by way of hands-shaking, and now with your kind consideration, to the story itself. THE AUTHOR. THE MISTAKE OF A LIFE-TIME. CHAPTER I. THE TAP ROOM OF ST. GILES. Now let it work: mischief, thou art afoot, THE street lamps were burning dimly in St. Giles, London, and the thick haze of night brooded over the eastern portion of the great metropolis with more than its wonted density. The vast, overgrown city was slumbering, or rather the more respectable portion of it were wrapped in the still mantle of sleep, while the noise and riotous dissipation that seemed indigenous to this section of the town, came bursting forth in rude boisterousness and undefined sounds from the broken windows of the tottering tenements, and now from some damp cellar's mouth, half under ground. The night police frequently passed in their rounds either end of the dark narrow streets, but they seemed to give no heed to the turmoil and rioting, so long as it was confined within doors, and did not burst forth into the open light in the streets. They had become calloused to these bachannalian scenes and vulgar habits, by intimacy with the people who inhabit these sections of the town, and did not care to interfere with them unless their duty and instructions compelled them to do so. It is here that we must introduce the reader in the opening of our story. The clock had already struck ten, one summer's night, when a couple of figures turned the corner from a large thoroughfare on SHAKSPEARE. George's-in-the-field, and quietly made their way down one of the narrow and dirty lanes referred to. They moved like persons who were fully aware of the vile character of the neighborhood, and who were on their guard to prevent being surprised, while the stealthiness with which they evidently picked their way through the riotous district, seemed to indicate some delicate and peculiar object in view. There was quite a difference in the size of the two persons. The larger was dressed in a coarse top coat and cloth cap, with rough top boots, his figure presenting tokens of remarkable physical strength, from the great breadth of shoulders and chest, and other signs that might have been seen even in that dim uncertain light. As he moved on, his gait discovered that he was lame, which rendered his walk somewhat awkward, though his step was quick and unyielding, notwithstanding this blemish. His companion must have been some years his junior, for his figure and bearing evinced the uncompleted frame of youth, though his form was stout and well filled, and he walked like one who had the resolution and the strength to hold his ground in any emergency. As they passed now and then beneath the street lamps that were lit along the road at intervals, his face appeared much darker than the |