had also been a merchant prince, but had been ruined by great losses. His creditors sent him to prison. In an instant, he was compelled to exchange a happy home and delightful society for a loathsome prison cell and the company of the debased. One by one his friends, who could aid hi in keeping famine from his wretched abode, disappeared, and he was forgotten by the outside. world. Twenty-three years he had been in jail. Gray-headed, haggard, ragged and perishing with hunger, he lay upon a heap of filthy straw in a dark, damp, unventilated room. His devoted wife, who had shared his misery eighteen years, had just starved to death and lay in rags by his side, silent and cold. An hour before, he had begged his jailer, with outstretched arms of supplication to remove her body to the prison buryingground. The inhuman wretch, who knew his history, refused with an oath, saying, with horrid irony:

"Send for your alderman's coach to take her to the abbey !'

"The man expired, when he had finished his sad story. There and then, inspired by God, Oglethorpe conceived a scheme of providing an asylum for such as these beyond the sea, where they might enjoy comfort and happiness. He also resolved to bring such jailers to punishment. The records of

some of the English state trials show how earnestly he pursued these felons."

No sadder story was ever told than that of Charles Montreville, a young and influential London merchant. He had a young and beautiful wife and a child Annie, a beautiful little girl of but six summers, when he was led by a scheming knave to invest in an enterprise which caused his financial ruin. Montreville placed himself in the power of an unscrupulous monster, who in the end plunged him in prison for debt.

His faithful wife, with her child, made a noble effort to release the father; but no one could be found able or bold enough to aid him. Bond, his persecutor, received the prayer of wife and child for mercy with laughter and scorn. The wretch even taunted them and finally imprisoned both with the father. Long months and years the family languished neglected and forgotten in prison.

Little Annie, who in early life had been carefully nursed, was now the associate of ruffians and monsters, for there was no distinction shown among prisoners. Those confined for debt were no better than the pickpocket and highwayman. Father and mother kept their child near them, and starved themselves that she might have sufficient food.

The parents were both seized with slow and lin

gering fevers which sapped their lives away, and as they lay on their miserable pile of straw unable to rise they prayed God to come to the relief of their child. The brutal jailer had assured them that she should rot in the prison until the debt was paid. For six long years the family had languished in jail, and the parents were dying slowly but surely.

One day the jailer came with the miserable allowance of stale bread and water for them, when the father, by a great effort, rose to a sitting posture and said:

"I want to talk with you."

Speak then, for I have no time to spare with such as you."

"We are dying."

“I've heard naught else for a fortnight, and you live yet," interrupted the jailer.

66 Yet we will soon be gone and there is our child growing to maidenhood. Will you not grant the last prayer of a dying father and release her from this wretched dungeon? She has done no wrong that she should suffer."

"Silence! I did not come to hear a sermon, growled the cruel jailer. "Release a prisoner whom I get a sixpence a day for keeping. Marry! you must think me a great dunce, to take bread out of my own mouth."

The father, by a great effort, got on his knees and prayed him to spare the child as the last request of a dying father; but the jailer spurned him with his foot and quitted the cell, closing the iron

door with a bang, and turning the ponderous key in the lock.

The poor father fell by the side of his wife, and both began to sob and bemoan the fate of their child, when another prisoner, called Gypsy Meg, who was scrubbing the corridor, came down to the

door of their cell and, rattling on the bars, whispered:

Don't ye go to givin' up in despair, gent and lady, for deliverance is coming. I heard of it." What mean you?" asked Montreville.

"I don't know what it means; but Madge hear new prisoner talk. Just come say all prisoners for debt be sent to America. Oglethorpe do it."

The strange, incoherent words of Gypsy Meg could not be understood by Montreville and his wife, until next day, when Colonel Oglethorpe, attended by an American youth of fifteen or sixteen years, came to look upon the wretched family. Oglethorpe had seen many objects of misery and compassion; but never had he seen as deplorable a sight as this. Strong man as he was, he was melted to tears. He had known Montreville in better days and knew that a nobler being never lived. He had disappeared suddenly from social and business circles, and he had not seen or heard of him until he found him in this loathsome dungeon.

While the dying parents were listening with joy to the deliverance which had come for their child, Noah Stevens stood gazing into a pair of large dark eyes, which beamed upon him with soft tenderness. Soft eyes in that prison were like diamonds in a heap of rubbish. pale and haggard.

The face of the little maid was
She was clothed in rags, sur-