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The comforters and heirs-prospective found time to take a sly glance of the Hall in the very heart of sorrow. "All very good and substantial," Mrs Twigg allowed; " and most delightful bedrooms; but there's a want goes all through the house."

"And what's that, madam ?" "Cupboards," responded Mrs Twigg. "Cupboards be hanged! Did you see the cellars?"

The Creole also came with his offer of consolation. "My dearest uncle," said the Creole, "for the sake of those who survive, you ought not to despond. Time is a cure for all griefs, and the many years I hope you have yet to

see

"One will be enough for me," answered the Baronet," and that is in its wane; I'm on my last legs. From this day forward, St Kitts, look on the pack as your own; keep 'em up as a master should, for the sake of the county and the old family name. Be pleasant to the farmers, and ware wheat ; mind and preserve hospitality. You'll find a cellar well stocked. Be the old English gentleman, and that says everything."

"This is too painful," said the Creole, "every word wrings my heart."

"Keep on all my servants," continued the Baronet, without attending to the other's exclamation; "don't part with one of them; they belong to a good old breed that, if I'm not mistaken, is wearing out. Not so showy and flourishing may-be, but staunch and steady to their work. Stand up for Church and King, and be kind to your aunt-poor Kate!"

"Alas!" said the Creole, "this is dreadful, every word is a farewell."

had become certain, he had never heard from his coadjutor, and in all his walks and rides he had not once encountered his foster-mother. Shortly afterwards he read in a newspaper of the death of Woodley in a duel. While he was reading this paper, Squire Ned was announced, a rather unwelcome visiter to Sir Walter.

“I got up a little out of sorts," he said, "with my nerves unsettled; and they have just been still further disturbed, by reading in the paper the fall of an old college chum in a duel.”

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Woodley, eh!" said the Squire, who had perused the same journal; "serve him right ;got punished for cogging;-know the fellow that settled him."

"It's a deplorable case," said the Creole, "in all its bearings; but gambler as I believe he was, one must be shocked at his being called to his account so unexpectedly."

"Nobody doubts," answered the Squire. "When the devil dies he'll have a chief mourner." "Mr Somerville," answered the Creole, as calmly as he could, "I can allow for your known ascetic temper, or such an expression would excite my serious displeasure. But I have observed with regret a kind of personal pique towards me in particular, unconscious as I am of any intentional cause of offence, ever since the lamentable death of

"Hold hard!" exclaimed the Squire; "don't name him; come to that by-and-by!"

The Creole, in spite of his affected indifference, was ill at ease. He was still ruminating when a servant presented a little billet. There were only two words in it; but those words were "Hennessey's Hut."

Sir Walter lost not an hour in seeking the spot indicated; forcing his way through the entangled forest, and bleeding from eagerly tearing asunder the briars. The hut stood in a small open plot, near the centre of the wood; it was a sort of log-house, like those in the back settlements of North America. He entered without

"Above all," concluded the Baronet, and he gave every word a distinct emphasis, "remember Raby was innocent. They say a man on the borders of the other world sees clearer than common, and that is my solemn view of it. Keep up the good name of the Tyrrels as well as the estates, and never abide a blot upon the 'scut-knocking. The voice of Marguerite saluted him cheon, or a mortgage upon the land."

These were almost the last words of the good Baronet. The next morning he was found in his bed, stiff and cold, in an attitude that shewed he had been towering towards heaven, as the wounded bird does, before he died. The marble hands were piously joined like those of a Christian knight on an old monument.

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Thus fell the head of this devoted house; the last main obstacle that had interposed between the Creole and his guilty object. In some minds such a consummation would almost incur denial, or at least a doubting of Providence, looking at the inequality of the dispensation. But poetical justice is one of the merest fictions; and consists, as the term imports, rather with Utopian views than with the real rugged course of human life.

The new Baronet had already written to Woodley, a former profligate college companion, and now a noted gambler in London, to dispose of the miserable Raby; but, though the fate of Raby

immediately from the inner chamber, desiring him to sit down on the chest till she had completed her dressing. The prescribed seat was a sort of large sea-chest, and was the only furniture of the room, except an old hogshead, which served for a table. On the top of this convenience, however, stood a teapot, and cup and saucer of antique China, which, to a virtuoso in that brittle ware, would have been inestimable; a solitary silver spoon lay beside the teapot, but it was of the most massive form and the richest workmanship. It seemed as if his wayward foster-mother intended to make a trial of his patience. At last, when his temper was on the point of giving way, the door of the inner chamber suddenly opened, and a figure presented itself that fixed him breathless to his seat.

It was Marguerite-not in the squalid attire of the wandering Queen of the gipsies, but in the rich splendid costume of an oriental prin

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descending nearly to the knee, where it finished with a rich gold fringe. Underneath this tunic was a white satin petticoat, elegantly embroidered; full trousers of the same material were fastened close above the ankle so as to set off its symmetry, and her slippers in colour matched her tunic. Her waist was circled by a broad zone, fastened in front by a diamond clasp, and the flowing sleeves of the robe were looped up at mid-arm by clusters of the same jewels.

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On her head she wore a turban of a singular but becoming form, the material of which it was composed being one of those Indian manycoloured shawls which are always so picturesque. The bosom was covered, but not concealed, by the same delicate muslin as the under-sleeves, and her throat was encircled by a collar of gold to match the bracelets.

She smiled at witnessing the astonishment of the Creole, and for a while enjoyed his admiration in silence.

The Creole was a warm admirer of beauty. He addressed her in an animated tone

"I think it is a pity Time did not stand still when he had such an object to gaze upon."

She was charmed with this flattering speech, which addressed itself to her weakest point; her eyes glistened, and exclaiming that she had forgotten to congratulate him on his new title, she advanced hastily and clasped him in a fond embrace. She held him in her arms so long and so closely, that it required almost a struggle on the part of the Creole to free himself and get upon his feet.

"And now, Marguerite," inquired the latter, "will you inform me of the purport of this Sultana presence?”

"What does it mean," answered Marguerite, with a smile, "but that I am going to resume my station in society! Such as you see me now, except that I was younger and more blooming, I was once every day of the week. Sir Walter Tyrrel has never invited me, but I am going back with him to the Hall that is now his own!" "To the Hall!" echoed the Creole.

"Yes, to the Hall," answered Marguerite, "where should a mother seek her home but in the house of her son ?"

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"Of her son!" repeated the Creole. "Of her son," reiterated Marguerite. Walter what heart but a mother's could have gone through what mine has for your sake? But compose yourself, Walter, compose yourself as I do, for I am afraid of my own happiness." * * "Walter, dearest Walter, speak to me," exclaimed the woman, in a voice of alarm, at the same time taking his hand. "The foster-mother was all a fable; it's your own parent stands before you-Indiana herself.”

"Away, woman! away !" cried the Creole fiercely, freeing his hand and starting to his feet at the same moment. "So then I am a dupe at last. Oh! had I foreseen this," and clasping his hands above his head, he paced rapidly to and fro across the narrow room with the frantic demeanour of a maniac.

"She-devil that you are, did you wind me in your hellish toils but for this-to make me the pitiful tool of your own ambition ?"

The eyes of Marguerite flashed angrily, but she restrained her passion.

He next affected to disbelieve her tale. Vain were all her pleadings. "Mother mine or mother not mine, makes no difference.

* *

*

*

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If I call you mother, it must be in St Kitts. I care not who bore me, so that I was born in wedlock; a point certain parties are in- ́ clined to dispute. May I depend upon the papers you gave me?"

"Trust to nothing," answered a stifled voice; and as the Creole looked at the speaker, he saw her leaning her head upon her hands against the door-post, whilst her body heaved as with convulsive spasms. Before he could get to her she was down; and she waved him from her with her arms at every attempt to raise her up again, whilst the blood flowed from her mouth so as to prevent her utterance. But her dark eyes spoke volumes as she fixed them upon the face of the Creole. She died choked with her own blood.

Sir Walter ransacked the hut, and found more than he sought, in the rough drafts of the forged papers that pretended to establish his legitimacy. He tore the jewels from her person, the gemmed rings from her fingers, and cursed the dead body, which he left to rot unburied.

Another six months passed away, and save for the menacing mysterious hints of Squire Ned, nothing outwardly disturbed Sir Walter in the enjoyment of his ill-gotten possessions.

Mrs Hamilton, who had quitted the Hall upon the death of her brother, was now at Hawksley, and thither went Sir Walter an ardent wooer. Grace shunned his presence, but one day he found her alone, and seized the opportunity to plead his passion.

"Do not, do not go," he said; "if it must be my last, at least grant me a longer audience; at least suffer me to lay my life and fortune at your feet, though they should be doomed to rejection. Allow me at least to shew that I am not blind to such perfection, but that I love-I adore-"

"Sir Walter," said Grace, angrily,

pass."

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"let me

"Not till you have bid me hope," said Sir Walter, sinking on one knee; place it as distant as you will, even like a star set in the farthest heaven, so that I may look forward without despair."

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you do not hate me, and I shall still have hope to live upon."

"Then despair," answered Grace. "As I hate all that is base, cruel, and treacherous, I hate Sir Walter Tyrrel;" and bursting into tears, she broke from him and hurried out of the room. The Creole was petrified. Her voice, like that of the accusing angel, had struck upon his guilty soul.

He left the house in rage, and, as he knew not well whither he went, in his way to the Hall he made a circuit which brought him near the cottage of Squire Ned, who, chancing to perceive him, immediately gave chase, and, as he came up, cried, "Must be a better than Cadeau to beat Barney-with Revenge on his back!"

Sir Walter looked at the speaker; his teeth were set, and his one eye was glimmering with an unquiet light. These were evil omens; and the misgivings of the Baronet returned in all their force. He determined to avoid, or postpone, if possible, the impending discussion, whatever might be its nature. They were now in the nook of an extensive heath, which was traversed at some distance by the high-road to the metropolis; and in this direction the eye of Sir Walter involuntarily glanced; but no coach was in sight, no stir of human life was visible, save one solitary pedestrian far off, who was moving along the heath. The Creole drew himself up more stiffly in his seat, and looking steadfastly straight before him, so as to avoid seeing his companion, he spoke with a slight but dignified wave of the hand:-

"Sir Walter Tyrrel declines all personal communication with Mr Somerville."

The Squire fiercely challenged him to an instant personal encounter. Sir Walter would have delayed this species of satisfaction.

"Now or never," answered the Squire, with a slight stamp of the foot; " here or nowhere.Dismount."

A hot blush of rage and shame flushed the face of Sir Walter, as he slowly complied with this brief mandate. The Squire led the two horses to the gate, to which he fastened them with peculiar care. After this operation had been deliberately performed, Ned returned slowly back with his face turned towards the earth, and each hand plunged into the ample pockets of his green shooting-jacket. He stopped full in front of the Creole, upon whom he fixed his one eye in dead silence. It has been said that no animal, not even the lion excepted, can withstand the fixed, settled gaze of the human eye, without much restlessness and some fear; and if these be tokens of their inferiority to man, the Creole was degraded to the level of the brute. He flinched, he trembled, under the solitary orb that was scanning him.

"I have two grave questions to put. Where is Ringwood?" and his right hand drew a long duelling-pistol from his pocket. "Where is Raby?" and his other hand produced the fellow weapon.

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pale and recoiling a step or two backwards, "Do you mean to murder me?"

"It would be in your own line," answered Ned, between his teeth; "but foul as it was, you shall have fair play. One of us two must die on this turf."

"No!" said Sir Walter, averting his head with a corresponding gesture of his hands, "there has been blood enough shed-by accident!"

“You lie, monster! you lie !" cried the Squire, with a terrible voice, thrilling with passion. "Think of your cousins ;-think of Sir Mark. If you had three lives, I'd take them all! You shall die the death of a dog!"

The Squire, on the death of Woodley, had accidentally obtained information of the villany of the Creole, and even the copy of his letter to the notorious gambler. This he handed to the writer.

The crisis of his fate was come. His teeth chattered, and the hair rose on his head. But one chance remained,, and he seized it with the desperation of a ruined man.

"I adopt your alternative-give me a pistol." "Take your choice," said Ned, "all right— loaded an hour ago!"

"Twelve paces," said Sir Walter; "or fifteen," he added, unconsciously acknowledging the deadly skill of his opponent.

The Squire made no reply, but proceeded to measure off the required distance, the double click of the Creole's weapon, as he put it upon full-cock, striking upon his ear as he completed the third stride. The sixth had hardly been taken, when the report rang, and the bullet whistled close by the Squire's head.

Ned stopped short and wheeled round. His eye glanced fiercely for an instant at the assassin ; the fatal barrel rose to its unerring level-a slight touch of the forefinger did the rest, and, after a convulsive leap, Sir Walter Tyrrel fell on his back on the grass, with a ball through his body.

In a moment Ned was bending over him, but not in remorse or pity. "One word, villain, for your soul's sake," he said; "did you see нIм in the fern ?"

"I did-God forgive me!" said the dying man, rolling himself over as he completed the confession, so as to lie with his face downwards.

"Then die! the sooner the better," and a blow from the butt end of the Squire's pistol sped the parting spirit in its exit. The savage act spoke terribly the awful amount of misery and anguish to be avenged-the complicated debt that even death was insufficient to expiate.

While Squire Ned bent musing over the body, a foot passenger came up :-"I am too late," he panted, "I hoped to prevent bloodshed. But what do I see?-the Squire !"

Ned turned and looked intently at the speaker, but he could not recognise him. He wore a blue coat and trousers, resembling the undress costume of a naval officer; and his face seemed weather-beaten and toil-worn, and embrowned “Good God !” exclaimed Sir Walter, turning by exposure to hot suns and the sharp sea air

Still there was something familiar in the features, as there had been in the voice of the stranger, that made the Squire examine him narrowly: and when the true thought at last dawned upon his mind, he literally gasped as he gave it

utterance

"God!-alive! Raby Tyrrel!"

The Squire guessed aright; though he now assured Raby that he was dead, and had been buried, with coffin and hearse-found drowned— funeral service-and everything proper to a dead man. The mistake was easily cleared up; in fleeing, Raby had met in the wood a noted poacher, George the saddler, and had prevailed with him to change clothes. The floods had swallowed the poacher. The rest of the story is soon told. Raby had been kidnapped. Hardships and privations had made a man of the sentimental dreamer; and Grace Rivers made him a happy man. They were married upon the anniversary of his return.

Above, we have given an outline of TYLNEY HALL, which outline holds the same relation to the spirited original that a poor engraving, upon a very small scale, and excluding many of the details, does to a capital original painting in oils-glowing with the magic of colour, and instinct with life. We select this mode advisedly with works of this light description, as we hold a Representation, however slight and imperfect, more satisfactory to the reader, and fairer to the author, than the papers usually termed Reviews. It is, we admit, not possible to represent the subject-matter of three stirring volumes in a few pages, without considerable deterioration of the beauty and unity even of the detached portions selected, and something approaching defacement of the symmetry and harmony of the more elaborated parts of the composition. Still it is, in our judgment, and by our experience of the public taste, infinitely preferable to the endless interruptions and impertinences of professed guides and Cicerones, dogmatically telling us, at every turn, what to admire and what to condemn, instead of selecting for our entertainment whatever is most worthy of admiration; and then, having quietly placed us in the most favourable point of view, leaving us to ourselves, to form our own opinions, and find our own enjoyment.

Having attempted to do for "Tylney Hall" what we have indicated, we may now be permitted to say a few words upon the only fiction which we have chosen for a lengthened notice, for many months; simply because we consider it far superior to any one of the battalion of novels that has appeared since last spring. It is a mixed composition of the old schools of Fielding, Cumberland, and Burney. God. win is not forgotten in its deeper characters, and Scott has tempted the author upon his most signal failure. The Twigg family group, which, in our small map, is only indicated by a dot, is painted in the broad style of exaggerated humour which characterized the caricatured comic parts of Miss Burney's novels, but the development is modern, and completely à la Hood. The episode of Uriah Bundy, a canting hypocritical sensualist, and a preacher among the Ranters, we have not noticed even by a dot, as we consider it an unseemly excrescence. there be such disgusting characters as Uriah Bundy, there is, we are certain, neither pleasure nor profit in contemplating them. In a few spirited stanzas, Burns dashed

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off the portrait of Holy Willie; and many rightminded persons have condemned that act of justice: but who could have endured a Holy Willie in detail? Nor is this the worst. Uriah is a Dissenter; and there are Churchmen who will chuckle over and be charmed with the picture of a vile hypocrite and blasphemous sensualist, who is a preacher among the Dissenters.

Our readers now know something of the brown woman, or the Queen of the Gipsies, and may with us regret that a character so painfully and spiritedly created, and which, at the outset, promises so much, should vanish in vapour; regret that she is all words and no deeds; and that her real motives-a mother's motives-are at last

found to be so low, paltry, and selfish. We are not going to resent an attempt to put us upon the wrong scent with her; for he must be a very simple romance-reader indeed, who is once thrown out, or for a moment led to believe that Marguerite and Indiana are not the same person. We must notice one more defect. The insolence, headstrongness, and downright brutality of Ringwood to his cousin, enlist the sympathies of the reader so entirely upon the side of the party thus ungenerously treated, as to neutralize the feeling of moral indignation which the subsequent villany of St Kitts is intended to excite. At the close of some of the altercations between the insolent, ill-instructed young aristocrat, and the unfortunate and dependent relative, whom he taunts with so little of manliness, the reader would have great satisfaction in seeing" the Heir and Hope of the Hall" brook the stab from the hand of his grossly-insulted kinsman.

Mr Justice Rivers strikes us as a rather tedious, tiresome, prosing personage; well designed, but quite overdone in the filling up. But the Twiggs, the Whist Club of The Rabbits, with the host and hostess thereof, and even the cook-maid, Master Constable Goff, the gamekeepers, foresters, and the rueful Joseph Spiller Joe the Unlucky-are all good in their kind, and some of them exquisite. For our countrywoman Tibbie Cawmel, whom our southern neighbours will probably admire more than we see cause to do, we may affirm that she is the only speaker of almost pure and even idiomatic Scotch we ever yet met with in a work written by a native of England. But the finest characters in the book are Sir Mark and Squire Ned. The latter seems to us as completely original as both are admirable. The scene of Ned's watch over the corpse of Ringwood, and the interviews between him and the Baronet, after the presumed death of Raby, and the Inquest, possess a depth and a power of homely pathos we have rarely felt equalled. How far beyond the mock-heroic or gloriftuckum scenes of the brown woman, are those quiet touches of nature, "making the whole world kin."

We do not know whether what we have next to say will be regarded as a grace or blemish. A modern critic complained that his printer made his bright sayings dull, and his clear ideas obscure, by keeping a pepper-box full of commas beside him, with which he dusted over and destroyed the original composition. Mr Hood seems to keep a pepper-box of puns and clenches beside him, (with some of the holes worn rather wide in the bore,) from which he dashes and sprinkles over his volumes, letting the point stick where it falls, though that may not always be exactly in the proper place. But the precincts of the graver, sterner, and more pathetic scenes, are kept sacred from the pepper-box; and, when we do not enjoy its piquancy, we are easily reconciled to its application elsewhere.

CHANGE OF MINISTRY.

SINCE the promulgation of the Ordonnances of the infatuated Charles the Tenth, which led to the Three Glorious Days, and hurled that imbecile despot from the throne, no political | event has so astounded Europe as the abrupt dismissal of Lord MELBOURNE'S government. The Whig Cabinet, purged and regenerated, had, with the single exception of Lord BROUGHAM, become almost liberal, and was gaining every day upon the affections and confidence of the country; and for the Chancellor, there was still room for forgiveness. The Whig Cabinet has been dismissed, unwarned, untried, harshly and ignominiously! For what dismissed? It was clearly seen that it would meet the wishes of the People, expressed in the House of Commons, and carry forward salutary reforms. We grant that the Tory faction had not a moment longer to lose. Their Generalissimo, the Duke of Wellington, has volunteered to sink his dignity and lead the Forlorn Hope. Their troops have been refreshed and invigorated with wine and revel, and inspired by the harangues of their orators :and now the feat is done! The gauntlet has been fairly thrown down to the People; rashly it may be, as the misgiving Tories already feel, but resolutely the very act necessitating the determination to put all to the hazard, and fight to the outrance. The flimsy pretext for this last and desperate effort was the death of an aged nobleman; which did not take his successor, Lord Althorp, from the government, but merely changed his position. The employment of such a pretext is below contempt. The King was advised to be, at all hazards, rid of a liberal Ministry; and the task of putting down Reform was rightly intrusted to one who had, in the face of the country, declared against all Reform. Be it so! In the name of God, and in the strength of their righteous cause, the People are prepared to accept the challenge, and to bid defiance, in their teeth, to this desperate faction.

"The Reform King," the "Second Alfred," the "Father of his People," has taken upon himself the responsibility of dismissing a government in which the Reformers were placing more and more reliance, and of calling to his councils the devoted, the vowed, the uncompromising enemy of all Reform; and more, for the time he has constituted this iron-hearted soldier the Dictator of Britain! What else is the Duke of WELLINGTON, while we write? The action has been rash-but the course will be daring, fearless, and remorseless. The bait of the Premiership is to be held out to the ambition of the cool and wary Sir ROBERT PEEL, who, before he can be apprized of the difficulties of his position, will find himself inextricably involved and drawn into the vortex with his party. The Duke of WELLINGTON, who is at present sole Minister, will, it is said, take the Home Department! Is the SOLDIER chosen to administer the domestic affairs

of the country, because it is foreseen that the battle must be fought in our home-fields, and in the streets of our manufacturing towns, at our national farces of large public meetings, and among our new constituencies? that "the dust must be laid in blood," if Reform is to be stayed, and that the BLACK FLAG must be hoisted at once at the HOME OFFICE, that it may flaunt against the popular banners of Glasgow, Birmingham, and Manchester. One of the recreant London journals, which has, for a long time back, evidently been as much in the interests of the Duke of WELLINGTON as the promotion of his well-paid service has permitted it to appear, already hints towards a small compact Pitt cabinet, consisting of seven members! Why not of three-why not of one-the Duke and an aidde-camp or two? Why not a military tribunal at once to which we are approximating rapidly, if we stand by and give leave? The same print counsels throwing out a tub* to amuse the whale, that time may be gained to coil the gambolling brute within the ropes, and to sharpen the harpoon. The utensils lacking blubber, after a four years' unsuccessful fishing, already stand gaping empty, ranged and ready, on the deck.

The Duke ought to make a declaration of his views," say these cunning gentlefolks: but the Duke is very delicately circumstanced with the Church, and with his honest though fanatical Ultra-Tory friends; and he possesses more contemptuous sincerity or arrogance of temper than to countenance fallacious expectation. He has come boldly forward, girded and armed to the teeth, as the Defender of the Church-of the Tories of Britain, and the Orangemen of Ireland. He will not even condescend to deceive us at the prompting of The Times, although we were such downright idiots and drivellers as for one moment to listen to his professions. As the Duke will assuredly fight it out, let us look to our means of defence. The issue of the battle is not doubtful; but there may be havoc, and wasted time, and even bloodshed, which foresight and wisdom could prevent. The will of a united and determined people, promptly expressed, must be omnipotent. The Reform Bill, with all its imperfections on its head, is, thanks to Lord Durham, and to Whigs and Liberals alike, armour of defence that will be found invulnerable to Tory weapons. Their scheme is to turn

* We look daily for the launch of the tub, though the various ingredients," thick and slab," of the bait to John Bull, cannot be properly concocted till the return of the head cook, Sir Robert Peel. There may probably be a leetle retrenchment--perhaps a dash of Law Reform-even a soupçon of Church Reform, to tickle the palates of Dissenters, and stay their keen stomachs. To speak seriously, the window-tax may be given up to the shopkeepers the malt-tax must be so to the landholders. There will certainly be an attempt at cobbling-intended to injure the Reform Bill; and perhaps, if Peel's scruples can be removed, we shall have an avalanche of small notes a fresh tampering with the currency.

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