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"Oh -- don't ask -- me -- I hardly remember, Miss Phillips. "We came here and had a drinking time with our whisky -- and I built a rousing fire -- and -- I recollect that John was swearing at me for taking his flask away -- when I saw some of the straw a-fire -- and soon my dress. So I called to him -- and he -- really -- he couldn't get up. (Oh! what a dreadful feeling burns is!) He cried out, 'D -- the fire! who cares?'"

"Oh, dear!" exclaimed the ladies. "How dreadful it is, Polly! It is a shame -- a disgrace -- a dreadful shame to you to live so; and it is a wicked, outrageous sin against God!"

"Well, (oh, dear me!) I found he couldn't help me -- so -- I rolled over on the flames, and with the old rag of a blanket, and a bit of carpet that were here, I succeeded in putting it out before it burnt us both to a crisp."

"Thank God you succeeded!" said they.

"Yes, indeed!" reiterated Mrs. Wilson.

"And thank also the villains who tore down the house over us and caused it!" said Polly, bitterly.

"Polly! Polly Tucker!" said Mrs. Phillips, solemnly. "You know better than to speak so, or to indulge those revengeful feelings. You know that you have lived here in a most unbecoming and sinful manner, against the wishes and entreaties of all the people, even of your own children -- and in opposition, I fully believe, to your own conscience -- and the people have borne it long, yes, very long; and I have been afraid you would finally suffer for it. Now, as you find you are suffering, rather accuse yourself than the people. Put the blame on your own determined and desperate career of intemperance and sin. Be thankful, Polly, that you are not now this moment in eternity -- a fearful eternity, too, I fear, to you, had it been entered on from such a drunken brawl as you have just described to us."

Polly covered her face and wept. She was now perfectly sober; and what, with the pain of her burns and the convictions of her conscience, 'she was sadly broken up, and felt her woeful and humbled condition.

But we are not going to chronicle Polly Tucker as a converted saint because she wept. Polly had wept be- fore. This, it is true, proved nothing against her pre- sent tears. But she did not profess to repent now. She only felt the truth smarting for a time on her conscience, and with mingled sense of shame and helpless- ness, tears were her natural relief. Her friends wept with her, and they besought her to repent earnestly and forever, and to cast herself on the mercy of Jesus now, while she felt her own need of assistance.

But Polly said, as many a one before her has said, -- "There is time enough yet to repent. When I am about to die and leave the world, I mean to!"

With perfect astonishment, the two ladies listened to this argument of the self-deceived victim of sin. "Time enough yet!" the destroying belief of thousands, though on the very brink of woe! How terribly this argument for further dilatoriness, and continuance in the ways of sin, addressed itself to the attention of her friends, mourning over the poor burned creature, bitterly moaning in her agony, and hardly removed herself the turning of a hand from death in the most awful shape! Ah 1 is there then "time enough yet?"

"But," said Polly, "Miss Phillips and Miss Wilson, dreadful as you may deem it to lie here, yet here let me lie rather than in that awful, loathsome, hateful poor-house! It is chock full and running over with vermin. They've got the scurvy there; they're cold, and starved, and forsaken. I had rather lie and suffer here, and die here, than go there."

Both the ladies sighed over the truth of this description. It fell within their belief, if not actual knowledge, that the poor-houses of New England were any thing but cleanly and well-ordered refuges for the fallen and guilty ones who sought there shelter and relief. Here was a new argument for a reform in the system of pauperage support, as the same was practiced among them! Was it indeed true, that a hovel such as this was preferable to the poor-house! Were all the associations of that establishment necessarily not only mortifying, but absolutely hateful and revolting? It would seem to be so. The feeling in opposition to the life led there seemed deep in the soul, as though it were one of the instincts of the human nature. They long remembered the impressions which that scene left on their hearts.

There was no other way but to leave her there that night. It was impossible to move her, nor was it the next day, nor the following -- she was badly burned.

Captain Bunce was notified by the selectmen of the state of things at Tuckers, and directed to take them as soon as possible into his immediate care. Protesting that they would not go; that they had rather die; that they would never live there, they were on Saturday removed to the poor-house -- again Mag, and Dan, and Jims, and Bill, and the widows all were fellow inmates of that institution.

After they were removed, the whole structure (chimney and every other part) was leveled with the ground. Mr. Phillips, in tearing up the floor, discovered a bright looking trinket among the rubbish, and getting down to it found a silver tobacco -- snuff-box -- and on the lid was engraved the name of "James Sherman!" Without examining, he carried it home and presented the curious object to his wife. She opened the box directly. Discovering the paper folded in it, she carefully withdrew, unfolded, and read what was written on it with a lady's pen. Astonishment held her mute for a few moments. She then spread the document before her husband. Twice carefully did Mr. Phillips read over the paper. Then folding, he replaced it in the box, and gave it to his wife, saying, "Guard it, my dear, as carefully as life itself; it is of inestimable value to the persons concerned."