Southern Christian Advocate

A GUILTY CONSCIENCE.

When Dr. Donne afterwards Dean of St. Paul's, took possession of his first living, as he walked into the church yard, he took up a skull thrown by the sexton out of a grave, and in it found a small headless nail, which he drew out secretly and wrapped in the corner of his handkerchief. He then asked the grave digger, if he knew whose the skull was? He replied, that it was the skull of a person who had kept a spirit shop, and who, having gone to bed intoxicated, was found dead in his bed in the morning. "Had he a wife?" asked the Doctor. "Yes." "What character does she bear?" "A very good one; only the neighbors reflect on her, because she married the day after her husband's burial." A few days afterwards the doctor paid her a visit, as if by accident; asked her some questions; and at last, of what sickness her former husband had died. As she was telling him the same story as the sexton, he opened his handkerchief, and cried out in an authoritative voice "Woman, do you know this nail?" Struck with horror, she instantly confessed the murder.