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Title: The Ghost

Author: William Douglas O'Connor

Illustrator: Thomas Nast

Release date: October 5, 2008 [eBook #26779]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by David Clarke, Mary Meehan and the Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
        file was produced from images generously made available
        by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GHOST ***




Produced by David Clarke, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)









                                     The Ghost.

                                 BY WM. D. O'CONNOR.


                        WITH TWO ILLUSTRATIONS BY THOS. NAST.


NEW YORK:
G. P. PUTNAM & SON, 661 BROADWAY.
LONDON: SAMPSON LOW & CO.
1867.

THE NEW YORK PRINTING COMPANY,
_81, 83, and 85 Centre Street_,
NEW YORK.




The Ghost.

A CHRISTMAS STORY.


At the West End of Boston is a quarter of some fifty streets, more or
less, commonly known as Beacon Hill.

It is a rich and respectable quarter, sacred to the abodes of Our First
Citizens. The very houses have become sentient of its prevailing
character of riches and respectability; and, when the twilight deepens
on the place, or at high noon, if your vision is gifted, you may see
them as long rows of Our First Giants, with very corpulent or very broad
fronts, with solid-set feet of sidewalk ending in square-toed curbstone,
with an air about them as if they had thrust their hard hands into their
wealthy pockets forever, with a character of arctic reserve, and portly
dignity, and a well-dressed, full-fed, self-satisfied, opulent, stony,
repellant aspect to each, which says plainly: "I belong to a rich
family, of the very highest respectability."

History, having much to say of Beacon Hill generally, has, on the
present occasion, something to say particularly of a certain street
which bends over the eminence, sloping steeply down to its base. It is
an old street--quaint, quiet, and somewhat picturesque. It was young
once, though--having been born before the Revolution, and was then given
to the city by its father, Mr. Middlecott, who died without heirs, and
did this much for posterity. Posterity has not been grateful to Mr.
Middlecott. The street bore his name till he was dust, and then got the
more aristocratic epithet of Bowdoin. Posterity has paid him by effacing
what would have been his noblest epitaph. We may expect, after this, to
see Faneuil Hall robbed of its name, and called Smith Hall! Republics
are proverbially ungrateful. What safer claim to public remembrance has
the old Huguenot, Peter Faneuil, than the old Englishman, Mr.
Middlecott? Ghosts, it is said, have risen from the grave to reveal
wrongs done them by the living; but it needs no ghost from the grave to
prove the proverb about republics.

Bowdoin street only differs from its kindred, in a certain shady, grave,
old-fogy, fossil aspect, just touched with a pensive solemnity, as if it
thought to itself, "I'm getting old but I'm highly respectable; that's a
comfort." It has, moreover, a dejected, injured air, as if it brooded
solemnly on the wrong done to it by taking away its original name, and
calling it Bowdoin; but as if, being a very conservative street, it was
resolved to keep a cautious silence on the subject, lest the Union
should go to pieces. Sometimes it wears a profound and mysterious look,
as if it could tell something if it had a mind to, but thought it best
not. Something of the ghost of its father--it was the only child he ever
had!--walking there all the night, pausing at the corners to look up at
the signs, which bear a strange name, and wringing his ghostly hands in
lamentation at the wrong done his memory! Rumor told it in a whisper,
many years ago. Perhaps it was believed by a few of the oldest
inhabitants of the city; but the highly respectable quarter never heard
of it; and, if it had, would not have been bribed to believe it, by any
sum. Some one had said that some very old person had seen a phantom
there. Nobody knew who some one was. Nobody knew who the very old person
was. Nobody knew who had seen it; nor when; nor how. The very rumor was
spectral.

All this was many years ago. Since then it has been reported that a
ghost was seen there one bitter Christmas eve, two or three years back.
The twilight was already in the street; but the evening lamps were not
yet lighted in the windows, and the roofs and chimney-tops were still
distinct in the last clear light of the dropping day. It was light
enough, however, for one to read, easily, from the opposite sidewalk,
"Dr. C. Renton," in black letters, on the silver plate of a door, not
far from the gothic portal of the Swedenborgian church. Near this door
stood a misty figure, whose sad, spectral eyes floated on vacancy, and
whose long, shadowy white hair, lifted like an airy weft in the
streaming wind. That was the ghost! It stood near the door a long time,
without any other than a shuddering motion, as though it felt the
searching blast, which swept furiously from the north up the declivity
of the street, rattling the shutters in its headlong passage. Once or
twice, when a passer-by, muffled warmly from the bitter air, hurried
past, the phantom shrank closer to the wall, till he was gone. Its
vague, mournful face seemed to watch for some one. The twilight
darkened, gradually; but it did not flit away. Patiently it kept its
piteous look fixed in one direction--watching--watching; and, while the
howling wind swept frantically through the chill air, it still seemed to
shudder in the piercing cold.

A light suddenly kindled in an opposite window. As if touched by a gleam
from the lamp, or as if by some subtle interior illumination, the
spectre became faintly luminous, and a thin smile seemed to quiver over
its features. At the same moment, a strong, energetic figure--Dr.
Renton, himself--came in sight, striding down the slope of the pavement
to his own door, his over-coat thrown back, as if the icy air were a
tropical warmth to him, his hat set on the back of his head, and the
loose ends of a 'kerchief about his throat, streaming in the nor'wester.
The wind set up a howl the moment he came in sight, and swept upon him;
and a curious agitation began on the part of the phantom. It glided
rapidly to and fro, and moved in circles, and then, with the same swift,
silent motion, sailed toward him, as if blown thither by the gale. Its
long, thin arms, with something like a pale flame spiring from the tips
of the slender fingers, were stretched out, as in greeting, while the
wan smile played over its face; and when he rushed by, unheedingly, it
made a futile effort to grasp the swinging arms with which he appeared
to buffet back the buffeting gale. Then it glided on by his side,
looking earnestly into his countenance, and moving its pallid lips with
agonized rapidity, as if it said: "Look at me--speak to me--speak to
me--see me!" But he kept his course with unconscious eyes, and a vexed
frown on his bold, white forehead, betokening an irritated mind. The
light that had shone in the figure of the phantom, darkened slowly, till
the form was only a pale shadow. The wind had suddenly lulled, and no
longer lifted its white hair. It still glided on with him, its head
drooping on its breast, and its long arms hanging by its side; but when
he reached the door, it suddenly sprang before him, gazing fixedly into
his eyes, while a convulsive motion flashed over its grief-worn
features, as if it had shrieked out a word. He had his foot on the step
at the moment. With a start, he put his gloved hand to his forehead,
while the vexed look went out quickly on his face. The ghost watched him
breathlessly. But the irritated expression came back to his countenance
more resolutely than before, and he began to fumble in his pocket for a
latch-key, muttering petulantly, "What the devil is the matter with me
now!" It seemed to him that a voice had cried, clearly, yet as from
afar, "Charles Renton!"--his own name. He had heard it in his startled
mind; but, then, he knew he was in a highly wrought state of nervous
excitement, and his medical science, with that knowledge for a basis,
could have reared a formidable fortress of explanation against any
phenomenon, were it even more wonderful than this.

He entered the house; kicked the door to; pulled off his over-coat;
wrenched off his outer 'kerchief; slammed them on a branch of the
clothes-tree; banged his hat on top of them; wheeled about; pushed in
the door of his library; strode in, and, leaving the door ajar, threw
himself into an easy chair, and sat there in the fire-reddened dusk,
with his white brows knit, and his arms tightly locked on his breast.
The ghost had followed him, sadly, and now stood motionless in a corner
of the room, its spectral hands crossed on its bosom, and its white
locks drooping down.

It was evident Dr. Renton was in a bad humor. The very library caught
contagion from him, and became grouty and sombre. The furniture was
grim, and sullen, and sulky; it made ugly shadows on the carpet and on
the wall, in allopathic quantity; it took the red gleams from the fire
on its polished surfaces, in hom[oe]opathic globules, and got no good
from them. The fire itself peered out sulkily from the black bars of the
grate, and seemed resolved not to burn the fresh deposit of black coals
at the top, but to take this as a good time to remember that those coals
had been bought in the summer at five dollars a ton--under price, mind
you--when poor people, who cannot buy at advantage, but must get their
firing in the winter, would then have given nine or ten dollars for
them. And so (glowered the fire), I am determined to think of that
outrage, and not to light them, but to go out myself, directly! And the
fire got into such a spasm of glowing indignation over the injury, that
it lit a whole tier of black coals with a series of little explosions,
before it could cool down, and sent a crimson gleam over the moody
figure of its owner in the easy chair, and over the solemn furniture,
and into the shadowy corner filled by the ghost.

The spectre did not move when Dr. Renton arose and lit the chandelier.
It stood there, still and gray, in the flood of mellow light. The
curtains were drawn, and the twilight without had deepened into
darkness. The fire was now burning in despite of itself, fanned by the
wintry gusts, which found their way down the chimney. Dr. Renton stood
with his back to it, his hands behind him, his bold white forehead
shaded by a careless lock of black hair, and knit sternly; and the same
frown in his handsome, open, searching dark eyes. Tall and strong, with
an erect port, and broad, firm shoulders, high, resolute features, a
commanding figure garbed in aristocratic black, and not yet verging into
the proportions of obesity--take him for all in all, a very fine and
favorable specimen of the solid men of Boston. And seen in contrast (oh!
could he but have known it!) with the attenuated figure of the poor, dim
ghost!

Hark! a very light foot on the stairs--a rich rustle of silks.
Everything still again--Dr. Renton looking fixedly, with great
sternness, at the half-open door, from whence a faint, delicious perfume
floats into the library. Somebody there, for certain. Somebody peeping
in with very bright, arch eyes. Dr. Renton knew it, and prepared to
maintain his ill-humor against the invader. His face became triply armed
with severity for the encounter. That's Netty, I know, he thought. His
daughter. So it was. In she bounded. Bright little Netty! Gay little
Netty! A dear and sweet little creature, to be sure, with a delicate and
pleasant beauty of face and figure, it needed no costly silks to grace
or heighten. There she stood. Not a word from her merry lips, but a
smile which stole over all the solitary grimness of the library, and
made everything better, and brighter, and fairer, in a minute. It
floated down into the cavernous humor of Dr. Renton, and the gloom began
to lighten directly--though he would not own it, nor relax a single
feature. But the wan ghost in the corner lifted its head to look at her,
and slowly brightened as to something worthy a spirit's love, and a dim
phantom's smiles. Now then, Dr. Renton! the lines are drawn, and the foe
is coming. Be martial, sir, as when you stand in the ranks of the cadets
on training-days! Steady, and stand the charge! So he did. He kept an
inflexible front as she glided toward him, softly, slowly, with her
bright eyes smiling into his, and doing dreadful execution. Then she put
her white arms around his neck, laid her dear, fair head on his breast,
and peered up archly into his stern visage. Spite of himself, he could
not keep the fixed lines on his face from breaking confusedly into a
faint smile. Somehow or other, his hands came from behind him, and
rested on her head. There! That's all. Dr. Renton surrendered at
discretion! One of the solid men of Boston was taken after a desperate
struggle--internal, of course--for he kissed her, and said, "Dear little
Netty!" And so she was.

The phantom watched her with a smile, and wavered and brightened as if
about to glide to her; but it grew still, and remained.

"Pa in the sulks to-night?" she asked, in the most winning, playful,
silvery voice.

"Pa's a fool," he answered in his deep chest-tones, with a vexed good
humor; "and you know it."

"What's the matter with pa? What makes him be a great bear? Papa-sy,
dear," she continued, stroking his face with her little hands, and
patting him, very much as Beauty might have patted the Beast after she
fell in love with him--or, as if he were a great baby. In fact, he began
to look then as if he were.

"Matter? Oh! everything's the matter, little Netty. The world goes round
too fast. My boots pinch. Somebody stole my umbrella last year. And I've
got a headache." He concluded this fanciful abstract of his grievances
by putting his arms around her, and kissing her again. Then he sat down
in the easy-chair, and took her fondly on his knee.

"Pa's got a headache! It is t-o-o bad, so it is," she continued in the
same soothing, winning way, caressing his bold, white brow with her tiny
hands. "It's a horrid shame, so it is! P-o-o-r pa. Where does it ache,
papa-sy, dear? In the forehead? Cerebrum or cerebellum, papa-sy? Occiput
or sinciput, deary?"

"Bah! you little quiz," he replied, laughing and pinching her cheek,
"none of your nonsense! And what are you dressed up in this way for,
to-night? Silks, and laces, and essences, and what not! Where are you
going, fairy?"

"Going out with mother for the evening, Dr. Renton," she replied
briskly; "Mrs. Larrabee's party, papa-sy. Christmas eve, you know. And
what are you going to give me for a present, to-morrow, pa-sy?"

"To-morrow will tell, little Netty."

"Good! And what are you going to give me, so that I can make _my_
presents, Beary?"

"Ugh!" but he growled it in fun, and had a pocket-book out from his
breast-pocket directly after. Fives--tens--twenties--fifties--all crisp,
and nice, and new bank-notes.

"Will that be enough, Netty?" He held up a twenty. The smiling face
nodded assent, and the bright eyes twinkled.

"No, it won't. But _that_ will," he continued, giving her a fifty.

"Fifty dollars, Globe Bank, Boston!" exclaimed Netty, making great eyes
at him. "But we must take all we can get, pa-sy; mustn't we? It's too
much, though. Thank you all the same, pa-sy, nevertheless." And she
kissed him, and put the bill in a little bit of a portemonnaie with a
gay laugh.

"Well done, I declare!" he said, smilingly. "But you're going to the
party?"

"Pretty soon, pa."

He made no answer; but sat smiling at her. The phantom watched them,
silently.

"What made pa so cross and grim, to-night? Tell Netty--do," she pleaded.

"Oh! because;--everything went wrong with me, to-day. There." And he
looked as sulky, at that moment, as he ever did in his life.

"No, no, pa-sy; that won't do. I want the particulars," continued Netty,
shaking her head, smilingly.

"Particulars! Well, then, Miss Nathalie Renton," he began, with mock
gravity, "your professional father is losing some of his oldest
patients. Everybody is in ruinous good health; and the grass is growing
in the graveyards."

"In the winter-time, papa?--smart grass!"

"Not that I want practice," he went on, getting into soliloquy; "or
patients, either. A rich man who took to the profession simply for the
love of it, can't complain on that score. But to have an interloping
she-doctor take a family I've attended ten years, out of my hands, and
to hear the hodge-podge gabble about physiological laws, and woman's
rights, and no taxation without representation, they learn from
her--well, it's too bad!"

"Is that all, pa-sy? Seems to me, _I'd_ like to vote, too," was Netty's
piquant rejoinder.

"Hoh! I'll warrant," growled her father. "Hope you'll vote the Whig
ticket, Netty, when you get your rights."

"Will the Union be dissolved, then, pa-sy--when the Whigs are beaten?"

"Bah! you little plague," he growled, with a laugh. "But, then, you
women don't know anything about politics. So, there. As I was saying,
everything went wrong with me to-day. I've been speculating in railroad
stock, and singed my fingers. Then, old Tom Hollis outbid me, to-day, at
Leonard's on a rare medical work I had set my eyes upon having. Confound
him! Then, again, two of my houses are tenantless, and there are folks
in two others that won't pay their rent, and I can't get them out. Out
they'll go, though, or I'll know why. And, to crown all--um-m. And I
wish the devil had him! as he will."

"Had who, Beary-papa?"

"Him. I'll tell you. The street floor of one of my houses in Hanover
street lets for an oyster-room. They keep a bar there, and sell liquor.
Last night they had a grand row--a drunken fight, and one man was
stabbed, it's thought fatally."

"O, father!" Netty's bright eyes dilated with horror.

"Yes. I hope he won't die. At any rate, there's likely to be a stir
about the matter, and my name will be called into question, then, as I'm
the landlord. And folks will make a handle of it, and there'll be the
deuce to pay, generally."

He got back the stern, vexed frown, to his face, with the anticipation,
and beat the carpet with his foot. The ghost still watched from the
angle of the room, and seemed to darken, while its features looked
troubled.

"But, father," said Netty, a little tremulously, "I wouldn't let my
houses to such people. It's not right; is it? Why, it's horrid to think
of men getting drunk, and killing each other!"

Dr. Renton rubbed his hair into disorder, with vexation, and then
subsided into solemnity.

"I know it's not exactly right, Netty; but I can't help it. As I said
before, I wish the devil had that bar-keeper. I ought to have ordered
him out long ago, and then this wouldn't have happened. I've increased
his rent twice, hoping to get rid of him so; but he pays without a
murmur; and what am I to do? You see, he was an occupant when the
building came into my hands, and I let him stay. He pays me a good,
round rent; and, apart from his cursed traffic, he's a good tenant. What
can I do? It's a good thing for him, and it's a good thing for me,
pecuniarily. Confound him. Here's a nice rumpus brewing!"

"Dear pa, I'm afraid it's not a good thing for you," said Netty,
caressing him, and smoothing his tumbled hair. "Nor for him either. I
wouldn't mind the rent he pays you. I'd order him out. It's bad money.
There's blood on it."

She had grown pale, and her voice quivered. The phantom glided over to
them, and laid its spectral hand upon her forehead. The shadowy eyes
looked from under the misty hair into the doctor's face, and the pale
lips moved as if speaking the words heard only in the silence of his
heart--"hear her, hear her!"

"I must think of it," resumed Dr. Renton, coldly. "I'm resolved, at all
events, to warn him that if anything of this kind occurs again, he must
quit at once. I dislike to lose a profitable tenant; for no other
business would bring me the sum his does. Hang it, everybody does the
best he can with his property--why shouldn't I?"

The ghost, standing near them, drooped its head again on its breast, and
crossed its arms. Netty was silent. Dr. Renton continued, petulantly:

"A precious set of people I manage to get into my premises. There's a
woman hires a couple of rooms for a dwelling, overhead, in that same
building, and for three months I haven't got a cent from her. I know
these people's tricks. Her month's notice expires to-morrow, and out she
goes."

"Poor creature!" sighed Netty.

He knit his brow, and beat the carpet with his foot, in vexation.

"Perhaps she can't pay you, pa," trembled the sweet, silvery voice. "You
wouldn't turn her out in this cold winter, when she can't pay you--would
you, pa?"

"Why don't she get another house, and swindle some one else?" he
replied, testily; "there's plenty of rooms to let."

"Perhaps she can't find one, pa," answered Netty.

"Humbug!" retorted her father; "I know better."

"Pa, dear, if I were you, I'd turn out that rumseller, and let the poor
woman stay a little longer; just a little, pa."

"Shan't do it. Hah! that would be scattering money out of both pockets.
Shan't do it. Out she shall go; and as for him--well, he'd better turn
over a new leaf. There, let us leave the subject, darling. It vexes me.
How did we contrive to get into this train. Bah!"

He drew her closer to him, and kissed her forehead. She sat quietly,
with her head on his shoulder, thinking very gravely.

"I feel queerly to-day, little Netty," he began, after a short pause.
"My nerves are all high-strung with the turn matters have taken."

"How is it, papa? The headache?" she answered.

"Y-e-s--n-o--not exactly; I don't know," he said dubiously; then, in an
absent way, "it was that letter set me to think of him all day, I
suppose."

"Why, pa, I declare," cried Netty, starting up, "if I didn't forget all
about it, and I came down expressly to give it to you! Where is it? Oh!
here it is."

She drew from her pocket an old letter, faded to a pale yellow, and gave
it to him. The ghost started suddenly.

"Why, bless my soul! it's the very letter! Where did you get that,
Nathalie?" asked Dr. Renton.

"I found it on the stairs after dinner, pa."

"Yes, I do remember taking it up with me; I must have dropped it," he
answered, musingly, gazing at the superscription. The ghost was gazing
at it, too, with startled interest.

"What beautiful writing it is, pa," murmured the young girl. "Who wrote
it to you? It looks yellow enough to have been written a long time
since."

"Fifteen years ago, Netty. When you were a baby. And the hand that wrote
it has been cold for all that time."

He spoke with a solemn sadness, as if memory lingered with the heart of
fifteen years ago, on an old grave. The dim figure by his side had bowed
its head, and all was still.

"It is strange," he resumed, speaking vacantly and slowly, "I have not
thought of him for so long a time, and to-day--especially this
evening--I have felt as if he were constantly near me. It is a singular
feeling."

He put his left hand to his forehead, and mused--his right clasped his
daughter's shoulder. The phantom slowly raised its head, and gazed at
him with a look of unutterable tenderness.

"Who was he, father?" she asked with a hushed voice.

"A young man--an author--a poet. He had been my dearest friend, when we
were boys; and, though I lost sight of him for years--he led an erratic
life--we were friends when he died. Poor, poor fellow! Well, he is at
peace."

The stern voice had saddened, and was almost tremulous. The spectral
form was still.

"How did he die, father?"

"A long story, darling," he replied gravely, "and a sad one. He was very
poor and proud. He was a genius--that is, a person without an atom of
practical talent. His parents died, the last, his mother, when he was
near manhood. I was in college then. Thrown upon the world, he picked up
a scanty subsistence with his pen, for a time. I could have got him a
place in the counting-house, but he would not take it; in fact, he
wasn't fit for it. You can't harness Pegasus to the cart, you know.
Besides, he despised mercantile life--without reason, of course; but he
was always notional. His love of literature was one of the rocks he
foundered on. He wasn't successful; his best compositions were too
delicate--fanciful--to please the popular taste; and then he was full of
the radical and fanatical notions which infected so many people at that
time in New England, and infect them now, for that matter; and his
sublimated, impracticable ideas and principles, which he kept till his
dying day, and which, I confess, alienated me from him, always staved
off his chances of success. Consequently, he never rose above the
drudgery of some employment on newspapers. Then he was terribly
passionate, not without cause, I allow; but it wasn't wise. What I mean
is this: if he saw, or if he fancied he saw, any wrong or injury done to
any one, it was enough to throw him into a frenzy; he would get black in
the face and absolutely shriek out his denunciations of the wrongdoer. I
do believe he would have visited his own brother with the most unsparing
invective, if that brother had laid a harming finger on a street-beggar,
or a colored man, or a poor person of any kind. I don't blame the
feeling; though with a man like him, it was very apt to be a false or
mistaken one; but, at any rate, its exhibition wasn't sensible. Well, as
I was saying, he buffeted about in this world a long time, poorly paid,
fed, and clad; taking more care of other people than he did of himself.
Then mental suffering, physical exposure, and want killed him."

The stern voice had grown softer than a child's. The same look of
unutterable tenderness brooded on the mournful face of the phantom by
his side; but its thin, shining hand was laid upon his head, and its
countenance had undergone a change. The form was still undefined; but
the features had become distinct. They were those of a young man,
beautiful and wan, and marked with great suffering.

A pause had fallen on the conversation, in which the father and daughter
heard the solemn sighing of the wintry wind around the dwelling. The
silence seemed scarcely broken by the voice of the young girl.

"Dear father, this was very sad. Did you say he died of want?"

"Of want, my child, of hunger and cold. I don't doubt it. He had
wandered about, as I gather, houseless for a couple of days and nights.
It was in December, too. Some one found him, on a rainy night, lying in
the street, drenched and burning with fever, and had him taken to the
hospital. It appears that he had always cherished a strange affection
for me, though I had grown away from him; and in his wild ravings he
constantly mentioned my name, and they sent for me. That was our first
meeting after two years. I found him in the hospital--dying. Heaven can
witness that I felt all my old love for him return then, but he was
delirious, and never recognized me. And, Nathalie, his hair--it had been
coal-black, and he wore it very long, he wouldn't let them cut it
either; and as they knew no skill could save him, they let him have his
way--his hair was then as white as snow! God alone knows what that brain
must have suffered to blanch hair which had been as black as the wing of
a raven!"

He covered his eyes with his hand, and sat silently. The fingers of the
phantom still shone dimly on his head, and its white locks drooped above
him, like a weft of light.

"What was his name, father?" asked the pitying girl.

"George Feval. The very name sounds like fever. He died on Christmas
eve, fifteen years ago this night. It was on his death-bed, while his
mind was tossing on a sea of delirious fancies, that he wrote me this
long letter--for to the last, I was uppermost in his thoughts. It is a
wild, incoherent thing, of course--a strange mixture of sense and
madness. But I have kept it as a memorial of him. I have not looked at
it for years; but this morning I found it among my papers, and somehow
it has been in my mind all day."

He slowly unfolded the faded sheets, and sadly gazed at the writing. His
daughter had risen from her half-recumbent posture, and now bent her
graceful head over the leaves. The phantom covered its face with its
hands.

"What a beautiful manuscript it is, father!" she exclaimed. "The writing
is faultless."

"It is, indeed," he replied. "Would he had written his life as fairly!"

"Read it, father," said Nathalie.

"No--but I'll read you a detached passage here and there," he answered,
after a pause. "The rest you may read yourself some time, if you wish.
It is painful to me. Here's the beginning:

"_'My Dear Charles Renton:--Adieu, and adieu. It is Christmas eve, and I
am going home. I am soon to exhale from my flesh, like the spirit of a
broken flower. Exultemus forever!'_

"It is very wild. His mind was in a fever-craze. Here is a passage that
seems to refer to his own experience of life:

"_'Your friendship was dear to me. I give you true love. Stocks and
returns. You are rich, but I did not wish to be your bounty's pauper.
Could I beg? I had my work to do for the world, but oh! the world has no
place for souls that can only love and suffer. How many miles to
Babylon? Threescore and ten. Not so far--not near so far! Ask
starvelings--they know. I wanted to do the world good and the world has
killed me, Charles.'_"

"It frightens me," said Nathalie, as he paused.

"We will read no more," he replied sombrely. "It belongs to the
psychology of madness. To me, who knew him, there are gleams of sense in
it, and passages where the delirium of the language is only a
transparent veil on the meaning. All the remainder is devoted to what he
thought important advice to me. But it's all wild and vague. Poor--poor
George!"

The phantom still hid its face in its hands, as the doctor slowly turned
over the pages of the letter. Nathalie, bending over the leaves, laid
her finger on the last, and asked--"What are those closing sentences,
father? Read them."

"Oh! that is what he called his 'last counsel' to me. It's as wild as
the rest--tinctured with the prevailing ideas of his career. First he
says, '_Farewell--farewell_;' then he bids me take his '_counsel into
memory on Christmas day_;' then, after enumerating all the wretched
classes he can think of in the country, he says. '_These are your
sisters and your brothers--love them all_.' Here he says, '_O friend,
strong in wealth for so much good, take my last counsel. In the name of
the Saviour, I charge you be true and tender to mankind._' He goes on to
bid me '_live and labor for the fallen, the neglected, the suffering,
and the poor_;' and finally ends by advising me to help upset any, or
all, institutions, laws, and so forth, that bear hardly on the fag-ends
of society; and tells me that what he calls 'a service to humanity' is
worth more to the doer than a service to anything else, or than anything
we can gain from the world. Ah, well! poor George."

"But isn't all that true, father?" said Netty; "it seems so."

"H'm," he murmured through his closed lips. Then, with a vague smile,
folding up the letter, meanwhile, he said, "Wild words, Netty, wild
words. I've no objection to charity, judiciously given; but poor
George's notions are not mine. Every man for himself, is a good general
rule. Every man for humanity, as George has it, and in his acceptation
of the principle, would send us all to the alms-house pretty soon. The
greatest good of the greatest number--that's my rule of action. There
are plenty of good institutions for the distressed, and I'm willing to
help support 'em, and do. But as for making a martyr of one's self, or
tilting against the necessary evils of society, or turning
philanthropist at large, or any quixotism of that sort, I don't believe
in it. We didn't make the world, and we can't mend it. Poor George.
Well--he's at rest. The world wasn't the place for him."

They grew silent. The spectre glided slowly to the wall, and stood as if
it were thinking what, with Dr. Renton's rule of action, was to become
of the greatest good of the smallest number. Nathalie sat on her
father's knee, thinking only of George Feval, and of his having been
starved and grieved to death.

"Father," said Nathalie, softly, "I felt, while you were reading the
letter, as if he were near us. Didn't you? The room was so light and
still, and the wind sighed so."

"Netty, dear, I've felt that all day, I believe," he replied. "Hark!
there is the door-bell. Off goes the spirit-world, and here comes the
actual. Confound it! Some one to see me, I'll warrant, and I'm not in
the mood."

He got into a fret at once. Netty was not the Netty of an hour ago, or
she would have coaxed him out of it. But she did not notice it now in
her abstraction. She had risen at the tinkle of the bell, and seated
herself in a chair. Presently a nose, with a great pimple on the end of
it, appeared at the edge of the door, and a weak, piping voice said,
reckless of the proper tense, "there was a woman wanted to see you,
sir."

"Who is it, James?--no matter, show her in."

He got up with the vexed scowl on his face, and walked the room. In a
minute the library door opened again, and a pale, thin, rigid,
frozen-looking little woman, scantily clad, the weather being
considered, entered, and dropped a curt, awkward bow to Dr. Renton.

"Oh! Mrs. Miller. Good evening, ma'am. Sit down," he said, with a cold,
constrained civility.

The little woman faintly said, "Good evening, Dr. Renton," and sat down
stiffly, with her hands crossed before her, in the chair nearest the
wall. This was the obdurate tenant, who had paid no rent for three
months, and had a notice to quit, expiring to-morrow.

"Cold evening, ma'am," remarked Dr. Renton, in his hard way.

"Yes, sir, it is," was the cowed, awkward answer.

"Won't you sit near the fire, ma'am," said Netty, gently; "you look
cold."

"No, miss, thank you. I'm not cold," was the faint reply. She was cold,
though, as well she might be with her poor, thin shawl, and open bonnet,
in such a bitter night as it was outside. And there was a rigid, sharp,
suffering look in her pinched features that betokened she might have
been hungry, too.

"Poor people don't mind the cold weather, miss," she said, with a weak
smile, her voice getting a little stronger. "They have to bear it, and
they get used to it."

She had not evidently borne it long enough to effect the point of
indifference. Netty looked at her with a tender pity. Dr. Renton thought
to himself--Hoh!--blazoning her poverty--manufacturing sympathy
already--the old trick--and steeled himself against any attacks of that
kind, looking jealously, meanwhile, at Netty.

"Well, Mrs. Miller," he said, "what is it this evening? I suppose you've
brought me my rent."

The little woman grew paler, and her voice seemed to fail on her
quivering lips. Netty cast a quick, beseeching look at her father.

"Nathalie, please to leave the room." We'll have no nonsense carried on
here, he thought, triumphantly, as Netty rose, and obeyed the stern,
decisive order, leaving the door ajar behind her.

He seated himself in his chair, and resolutely put his right leg up to
rest on his left knee. He did not look at his tenant's face, determined
that her piteous expressions (got up for the occasion, of course) should
be wasted on him.

"Well, Mrs. Miller," he said again.

"Dr. Renton," she began, faintly gathering her voice as she proceeded,
"I have come to see you about the rent. I am very sorry, sir, to have
made you wait, but we have been unfortunate."

"Sorry, ma'am," he replied, knowing what was coming; "but your
misfortunes are not my affair. We all have misfortunes, ma'am. But we
must pay our debts, you know."

"I expected to have got money from my husband before this, sir," she
resumed, "and I wrote to him. I got a letter from him to-day, sir, and
it said that he sent me fifty dollars a month ago, in a letter; and it
appears that the post-office is to blame, or somebody, for I never got
it. It was nearly three months' wages, sir, and it is very hard to lose
it. If it hadn't been for that, your rent would have been paid long ago,
sir."

"Don't believe a word of _that_ story," thought Dr. Renton,
sententiously.

"I thought, sir," she continued, emboldened by his silence, "that if you
would be willing to wait a little longer, we would manage to pay you
soon, and not let it occur again. It has been a hard winter with us,
sir; firing is high, and provisions, and everything; and we're only poor
people, you know, and it's difficult to get along."

The doctor made no reply.

"My husband was unfortunate, sir, in not being able to get employment
here," she resumed; "his being out of work, in the autumn, threw us all
back, and we've got nothing to depend on but his earnings. The family
that he's in now, sir, don't give him very good pay--only twenty dollars
a month, and his board--but it was the best chance he could get, and it
was either go to Baltimore with them, or stay at home and starve, and so
he went, sir. It's been a hard time with us, and one of the children is
sick, now, with a fever, and we don't hardly know how to make out a
living. And so, sir, I have come here this evening, leaving the children
alone, to ask you if you wouldn't be kind enough to wait a little
longer, and we'll hope to make it right with you in the end."

"Mrs. Miller," said Dr. Renton, with stern composure, "I have no wish to
question the truth of any statement you may make; but I must tell you
plainly, that I can't afford to let my houses for nothing. I told you a
month ago, that if you couldn't pay me my rent, you must vacate the
premises. You know very well that there are plenty of tenants who are
able and willing to pay when the money comes due. You _know_ that."

He paused as he said this, and, glancing at her, saw her pale lips
falter. It shook the cruelty of his purpose a little, and he had a vague
feeling that he was doing wrong. Not without a proud struggle, during
which no word was spoken, could he beat it down. Meanwhile, the phantom
had advanced a pace toward the centre of the room.

"That is the state of the matter, ma'am," he resumed, coldly. "People
who will not pay me my rent must not live in my tenements. You must move
out. I have no more to say."

"Dr. Renton," she said faintly, "I have a sick child--how can I move
now? Oh! sir, it's Christmas eve--don't be hard with us!"

Instead of touching him, this speech irritated him beyond measure.
Passing all considerations of her difficult position involved in her
piteous statement, his anger flashed at once on her implication that he
was unjust and unkind. So violent was his excitement that it whirled
away the words that rushed to his lips, and only fanned the fury that
sparkled from the whiteness of his face in his eyes.

"Be patient with us, sir," she continued; "we are poor, but we mean to
pay you; and we can't move now in this cold weather; please, don't be
hard with us, sir."

The fury now burst out on his face in a red and angry glow, and the
words came.

"Now, attend to me!" He rose to his feet. "I will not hear any more from
you. I know nothing of your poverty, nor of the condition of your
family. All I know is that you owe me three months' rent, and that you
can't or won't pay me. I say, therefore, leave the premises to people
who can and will. You have had your legal notice; quit my house
to-morrow; if you don't, your furniture shall be put in the street. Mark
me--to-morrow!"

The phantom had rushed into the centre of the room. Standing, face to
face with him--dilating--blackening--its whole form shuddering with a
fury to which his own was tame--the semblance of a shriek upon its
flashing lips, and on its writhing features, and an unearthly anger
streaming from its bright and terrible eyes--it seemed to throw down,
with its tossing arms, mountains of hate and malediction on the head of
him whose words had smitten poverty and suffering, and whose heavy hand
was breaking up the barriers of a home.

Dr. Renton sank again into his chair. His tenant--not a woman!--not a
sister in humanity!--but only his tenant; she sat crushed and frightened
by the wall. He knew it vaguely. Conscience was battling in his heart
with the stubborn devils that had entered there. The phantom stood
before him, like a dark cloud in the image of a man. But its darkness
was lightening slowly, and its ghostly anger had passed away.

The poor woman, paler than before, had sat mute and trembling, with all
her hopes ruined. Yet her desperation forbade her to abandon the chances
of his mercy, and she now said:

"Dr. Renton, you surely don't mean what you have told me. Won't you bear
with me a little longer, and we will yet make it all right with you?"

"I have given you my answer," he returned, coldly; "I have no more to
add. I never take back anything I say--never!"

It was true. He never did--never! She half rose from her seat as if to
go; but weak and sickened with the bitter result of her visit, she sunk
down again with her head bowed. There was a pause. Then, solemnly
gliding across the lighted room, the phantom stole to her side with a
glory of compassion on its wasted features. Tenderly, as a son to a
mother, it bent over her; its spectral hands of light rested upon her in
caressing and benediction; its shadowy fall of hair, once blanched by
the anguish of living and loving, floated on her throbbing brow; and
resignation and comfort not of this world, sank upon her spirit, and
consciousness grew dim within her, and care and sorrow seemed to die.

He who had been so cruel and so hard, sat silent in black gloom. The
stern and sullen mood from which had dropped but one fierce flash of
anger, still hung above the heat of his mind, like a dark rack of
thunder-cloud. It would have burst anew into a fury of rebuke, had he
but known his daughter was listening at the door, while the colloquy
went on. It might have flamed violently, had his tenant made any further
attempt to change his purpose. She had not. She had left the room
meekly, with the same curt, awkward bow that marked her entrance. He
recalled her manner very indistinctly; for a feeling, like a mist, began
to gather in his mind, and make the occurrences of moments before
uncertain.

Alone, now, he was yet oppressed with a sensation that something was
near him. Was it a spiritual instinct? for the phantom stood by his
side. It stood silently, with one hand raised above his head, from which
a pale flame seemed to flow downward to his brain; its other hand
pointed movelessly to the open letter on the table beside him.

He took the sheets from the table, thinking, at the moment, only of
George Feval; but the first line on which his eye rested was, "In the
name of the Saviour, I charge you, be true and tender to mankind!" and
the words touched him like a low voice from the grave. Their penetrant
reproach pierced the hardness of his heart. He tossed the letter back on
the table. The very manner of the act accused him of an insult to the
dead. In a moment he took up the faded sheets more reverently, but only
to lay them down again.

He had not been well that day, and he now felt worse than before. The
pain in his head had given place to a strange sense of dilation, and
there was a silent, confused riot in his fevered brain, which seemed to
him like the incipience of insanity. Striving to divert his mind from
what had passed, by reflection on other themes, he could not hold his
thoughts; they came teeming but dim, and slipped and fell away; and only
the one circumstance of his recent cruelty, mixed with remembrance of
George Feval, recurred and clung with vivid persistence. This tortured
him. Sitting there, with arms tightly interlocked, he resolved to wrench
his mind down by sheer will upon other things; and a savage pleasure at
what at once seemed success, took possession of him. In this mood, he
heard soft footsteps and the rustle of festal garments on the stairs,
and had a fierce complacency in being able to clearly apprehend that it
was his wife and daughter going out to the party. In a moment, he heard
the controlled and even voice of Mrs. Renton--a serene and polished lady
with whom he had lived for years in cold and civil alienation, both
seeing as little of each other as possible. With a scowl of will upon
his brow, he received her image distinctly into his mind, even to the
minutia of the dress and ornaments he knew she wore, and felt an
absolutely savage exultation in his ability to retain it. Then came the
sound of the closing of the hall door and the rattle of receding wheels,
and somehow it was Nathalie and not his wife that he was holding so
grimly in his thought, and with her, salient and vivid as before, the
tormenting remembrance of his tenant, connected with the memory of
George Feval. Springing to his feet, he walked the room.

He had thrown himself on a sofa, still striving to be rid of his
remorseful visitations, when the library door opened, and the inside man
appeared, with his hand held bashfully over his nose. It flashed on him
at once, that his tenant's husband was the servant of a family like this
fellow; and, irritated that the whole matter should be thus broadly
forced upon him in another way, he harshly asked him what he wanted. The
man only came in to say that Mrs. Renton and the young lady had gone out
for the evening, but that tea was laid for him in the dining-room. He
did not want any tea, and if anybody called, he was not at home. With
this charge, the man left the room, closing the door behind him.

If he could but sleep a little! Rising from the sofa, he turned the
lights of the chandelier low, and screened the fire. The room was still.
The ghost stood, faintly radiant, in a remote corner. Dr. Renton lay
down again, but not to repose. Things he had forgotten of his dead
friend, now started up again in remembrance, fresh from the grave of
many years; and not one of them but linked itself by some mysterious
bond to something connected with his tenant, and became an accusation.

He had lain thus for more than an hour, feeling more and more unmanned
by illness, and his mental excitement fast becoming intolerable, when he
heard a low strain of music, from the Swedenborgian chapel, hard by. Its
first impression was one of solemnity and rest, and its first sense, in
his mind, was of relief. Perhaps it was the music of an evening meeting;
or it might be that the organist and choir had met for practice.
Whatever its purpose, it breathed through his heated fancy like a cool
and fragrant wind. It was vague and sweet and wandering at first,
straying on into a strain more mysterious and melancholy, but very
shadowy and subdued, and evoking the innocent and tender moods of early
youth before worldliness had hardened around his heart. Gradually, as he
listened to it, the fires in his brain were allayed, and all yielded to
a sense of coolness and repose. He seemed to sink from trance to trance
of utter rest, and yet was dimly aware that either something in his own
condition, or some supernatural accession of tone, was changing the
music from its proper quality to a harmony more infinite and awful. It
was still low and indeterminate and sweet, but had unaccountably and
strangely swelled into a gentle and sombre dirge, incommunicably
mournful, and filled with a dark significance that touched him in his
depth of rest with a secret tremor and awe. As he listened, rapt and
vaguely wondering, the sense of his tranced sinking seemed to come to an
end, and with the feeling of one who had been descending for many hours,
and at length lay motionless at the bottom of a deep, dark chasm, he
heard the music fail and cease.

A pause, and then it rose again, blended with the solemn voices of the
choir, sublimed and dilated now, reaching him as though from weird night
gulfs of the upper air, and charged with an overmastering pathos as of
the lamentations of angels. In the dimness and silence, in the aroused
and exalted condition of his being, the strains seemed unearthly in
their immense and desolate grandeur of sorrow, and their mournful and
dark significance was now for him. Working within him the impression of
vast, innumerable, fleeing shadows, thick-crowding memories of all the
ways and deeds of an existence fallen from its early dreams and aims,
poured across the midnight of his soul, and under the streaming
melancholy of the dirge, his life showed like some monstrous treason. It
did not terrify or madden him; he listened to it rapt utterly as in some
deadening ether of dream; yet feeling to his inmost core all its
powerful grief and accusation, and quietly aghast at the sinister
consciousness it gave him. Still it swelled, gathering and sounding on
into yet mightier pathos, till all at once it darkened and spread wide
in wild despair, and aspiring again into a pealing agony of
supplication, quivered and died away in a low and funereal sigh.

The tears streamed suddenly upon his face; his soul lightened and turned
dark within him; and as one faints away, so consciousness swooned, and
he fell suddenly down a precipice of sleep. The music rose again, a
pensive and holy chant, and sounded on to its close, unaffected by the
action of his brain, for he slept and heard it no more. He lay
tranquilly, hardly seeming to breathe, in motionless repose. The room
was dim and silent, and the furniture took uncouth shapes around him.
The red glow upon the ceiling, from the screened fire, showed the misty
figure of the phantom kneeling by his side. All light had gone from the
spectral form. It knelt beside him, mutely, as in prayer. Once it gazed
at his quiet face with a mournful tenderness, and its shadowy hands
caressed his forehead. Then it resumed its former attitude, and the slow
hours crept by.

At last it rose and glided to the table, on which lay the open letter.
It seemed to try to lift the sheets with its misty hands--but vainly.
Next it essayed the lifting of a pen which lay there--but failed. It was
a piteous sight, to see its idle efforts on these shapes of grosser
matter, which appeared now to have to it but the existence of illusions.
Wandering about the shadowy room, it wrung its phantom hands as in
despair.

Presently it grew still. Then it passed quickly to his side, and stood
before him. He slept calmly. It placed one ghostly hand above his
forehead, and, with the other pointed to the open letter. In this
attitude its shape grew momentarily more distinct. It began to kindle
into brightness. The pale flame again flowed from its hand, streaming
downward to his brain. A look of trouble darkened the sleeping face.
Stronger--stronger; brighter--brighter; until, at last, it stood before
him, a glorious shape of light, with an awful look of commanding love in
its shining features--and the sleeper sprang to his feet with a cry!

The phantom had vanished. He saw nothing. His first impression was, not
that he had dreamed, but that, awaking in the familiar room, he had seen
the spirit of his dead friend, bright and awful by his side, and that it
had gone! In the flash of that quick change, from sleeping to waking, he
had detected, he thought, the unearthly being that, he now felt, watched
him from behind the air, and it had vanished! The library was the same
as in the moment of that supernatural revealing; the open letter lay
upon the table still; only _that_ was gone which had made these common
aspects terrible. Then, all the hard, strong skepticism of his nature,
which had been driven backward by the shock of his first conviction,
recoiled, and rushed within him, violently struggling for its former
vantage ground; till, at length, it achieved the foothold for a doubt.
Could he have dreamed? The ghost, invisible, still watched him. Yes--a
dream--only a dream; but, how vivid--how strange! With a slow thrill
creeping through his veins--the blood curdling at his heart--a cold
sweat starting on his forehead, he stared through the dimness of the
room. All was vacancy.

With a strong shudder, he strode forward, and turned up the flames of
the chandelier. A flood of garish light filled the apartment. In a
moment, remembering the letter to which the phantom of his dream had
pointed, he turned and took it from the table. The last page lay upward,
and every word of the solemn counsel at the end seemed to dilate on the
paper, and all its mighty meaning rushed upon his soul. Trembling in his
own despite, he laid it down and moved away. A physician, he remembered
that he was in a state of violent nervous excitement, and thought that
when he grew calmer its effects would pass from him. But the hand that
had touched him had gone down deeper than the physician, and reached
what God had made.

He strove in vain. The very room, in its light and silence, and the
lurking sentiment of something watching him, became terrible. He could
not endure it. The devils in his heart, grown pusillanimous, cowered
beneath the flashing strokes of his aroused and terrible conscience. He
could not endure it. He must go out. He will walk the streets. It is not
late--it is but ten o'clock. He will go.

The air of his dream still hung heavily about him. He was in the
street--he hardly remembered how he had got there, or when; but there he
was, wrapped up from the searching cold, thinking, with a quiet horror
in his mind, of the darkened room he had left behind, and haunted by the
sense that something was groping about there in the darkness, searching
for him. The night was still and cold. The full moon was in the zenith.
Its icy splendor lay on the bare streets, and on the walls of the
dwellings. The lighted oblong squares of curtained windows, here and
there, seemed dim and waxen in the frigid glory. The familiar aspect of
the quarter had passed away, leaving behind only a corpse-like
neighborhood, whose huge, dead features, staring rigidly through the
thin, white shroud of moonlight that covered all, left no breath upon
the stainless skies. Through the vast silence of the night he passed
along; the very sound of his footfalls was remote to his muffled sense.

Gradually, as he reached the first corner, he had an uneasy feeling that
a thing--a formless, unimaginable thing--was dogging him. He had thought
of going down to his club-room; but he now shrank from entering, with
this thing near him, the lighted rooms where his set were busy with
cards and billiards, over their liquors and cigars, and where the heated
air was full of their idle faces and careless chatter, lest some one
should bawl out that he was pale, and ask him what was the matter, and
he should answer, tremblingly, that something was following him, and was
near him then! He must get rid of it first; he must walk quickly, and
baffle its pursuit by turning sharp corners, and plunging into devious
streets and crooked lanes, and so lose it!

It was difficult to reach through memory to the crazy chaos of his mind
on that night, and recall the route he took while haunted by this
feeling; but he afterward remembered that, without any other purpose
than to baffle his imaginary pursuer, he traversed at a rapid pace a
large portion of the moonlit city; always (he knew not why) avoiding the
more populous thoroughfares, and choosing unfrequented and tortuous
byways, but never ridding himself of that horrible confusion of mind in
which the faces of his dead friend and the pale woman were strangely
blended, nor of the fancy that he was followed. Once, as he passed the
hospital where Feval died, a faint hint seemed to flash and vanish from
the clouds of his lunacy, and almost identify the dogging goblin with
the figure of his dream; but the conception instantly mixed with a
disconnected remembrance that this was Christmas eve, and then slipped
from him, and was lost. He did not pause there, but strode on. But just
there, what had been frightful became hideous. For at once he was
possessed with the conviction that the thing that lurked at a distance
behind him, was quickening its movement, and coming up to seize him. The
dreadful fancy stung him like a goad, and, with a start, he accelerated
his flight, horribly conscious that what he feared was slinking along in
the shadow, close to the dark bulks of the houses, resolutely pursuing,
and bent on overtaking him. Faster! His footfalls rang hollowly and loud
on the moonlit pavement, and in contrast with their rapid thuds he felt
it as something peculiarly terrible that the furtive thing behind, slunk
after him with soundless feet. Faster, faster! Traversing only the most
unfrequented streets, and at that late hour of a cold winter night, he
met no one, and with a terrifying consciousness that his pursuer was
gaining on him, he desperately strode on. He did not dare to look
behind, dreading less what he might see, than the momentary loss of
speed the action might occasion. Faster, faster, faster! And all at once
he knew that the dogging thing had dropped its stealthy pace and was
racing up to him. With a bound he broke into a run, seeing, hearing,
heeding nothing, aware only that the other was silently louping on his
track two steps to his one; and with that frantic apprehension upon him,
he gained the next street, flung himself around the corner with his back
to the wall, and his arms convulsively drawn up for a grapple; and felt
something rush whirring past his flank, striking him on the shoulder as
it went by, with a buffet that made a shock break through his frame.
That shock restored him to his senses. His delusion was suddenly
shattered. The goblin was gone. He was free.

He stood panting, like one just roused from some terrible dream, wiping
the reeking perspiration from his forehead and thinking confusedly and
wearily what a fool he had been. He felt he had wandered a long distance
from his house, but had no distinct perception of his whereabouts. He
only knew he was in some thinly-peopled street, whose familiar aspect
seemed lost to him in the magical disguise the superb moonlight had
thrown over all. Suddenly a film seemed to drop from his eyes, as they
became riveted on a lighted window, on the opposite side of the way. He
started, and a secret terror crept over him, vaguely mixed with the
memory of the shock he had felt as he turned the last corner, and his
distinct, awful feeling that something invisible had passed him. At the
same instant he felt, and thrilled to feel, a touch, as of a light
finger, on his cheek. He was in Hanover street. Before him was the
house--the oyster-room staring at him through the lighted transparencies
of its two windows, like two square eyes, below; and his tenant's light
in a chamber above! The added shock which this discovery gave to the
heaving of his heart, made him gasp for breath. Could it be? Did he
still dream? While he stood panting and staring at the building, the
city clocks began to strike. Eleven o'clock; it was ten when he came
away; how he must have driven! His thoughts caught up the word.
Driven--by what? Driven from his house in horror, through street and
lane, over half the city--driven--hunted in terror, and smitten by a
shock here! Driven--driven! He could not rid his mind of the word, nor
of the meaning it suggested. The pavements about him began to ring and
echo with the tramp of many feet, and the cold, brittle air was shivered
with the noisy voices that had roared and bawled applause and laughter
at the National Theatre all the evening, and were now singing and
howling homeward. Groups of rude men, and ruder boys, their breaths
steaming in the icy air, began to tramp by, jostling him as they passed,
till he was forced to draw back to the wall, and give them the sidewalk.
Dazed and giddy, in cold fear, and with the returning sense of something
near him, he stood and watched the groups that pushed and tumbled in
through the entrance of the oyster-room, whistling and chattering as
they went, and banging the door behind them. He noticed that some came
out presently, banging the door harder, and went, smoking and shouting,
down the street. Still they poured in and out, while the street was
startled with their stimulated riot, and the bar-room within echoed
their trampling feet and hoarse voices. Then, as his glance wandered
upward to his tenant's window, he thought of the sick child, mixing this
hideous discord in the dreams of fever. The word brought up the name and
the thought of his dead friend. "In the name of the Saviour, I charge
you be true and tender to mankind!" The memory of these words seemed to
ring clearly, as if a voice had spoken them, above the roar that
suddenly rose in his mind. In that moment he felt himself a wretched and
most guilty man. He felt that his cruel words had entered that humble
home, to make desperate poverty more desperate, to sicken sickness, and
to sadden sorrow. Before him was the dram-shop, let and licensed to
nourish the worst and most brutal appetites and instincts of human
natures, at the sacrifice of all their highest and holiest tendencies.
The throng of tipplers and drunkards was swarming through its hopeless
door, to gulp the fiery liquor whose fumes give all shames, vices,
miseries, and crimes, a lawless strength and life, and change the man
into the pig or tiger. Murder was done, or nearly done, within those
walls last night. Within those walls no good was ever done; but, daily,
unmitigated evil, whose results were reaching on to torture unborn
generations. He had consented to it all! He could not falter, or
equivocate, or evade, or excuse. His dead friend's words rang in his
conscience like the trump of the judgment angel. He was conquered.

Slowly, the resolve to instantly go in up-rose within him, and with it a
change came upon his spirit, and the natural world, sadder than before,
but sweeter, seemed to come back to him. A great feeling of relief
flowed upon his mind. Pale and trembling still, he crossed the street
with a quick, unsteady step, entered a yard at the side of the house,
and, brushing by a host of white, rattling spectres of frozen clothes,
which dangled from lines in the inclosure, mounted some wooden steps,
and rang the bell. In a minute he heard footsteps within, and saw the
gleam of a lamp. His heart palpitated violently as he heard the lock
turning, lest the answerer of his summons might be his tenant. The door
opened, and, to his relief, he stood before a rather decent-looking
Irishman, bending forward in his stocking feet, with one boot and a lamp
in his hand. The man stared at him from a wild head of tumbled red hair,
with a half smile round his loose open mouth, and said, "Begorra!" This
was a second floor tenant.

Dr. Renton was relieved at the sight of him; but he rather failed in an
attempt at his rent-day suavity of manner, when he said:

"Good evening, Mr. Flanagan. Do you think I can see Mrs. Miller
to-night?"

"She's up _there_, docther, anyway." Mr. Flanagan made a sudden start
for the stairs, with the boot and lamp at arm's length before him, and
stopped as suddenly. "Yull go up?--or wud she come down to ye?" There
was as much anxious indecision in Mr. Flanagan's general aspect, pending
the reply, as if he had to answer the question himself.

"I'll go up, Mr. Flanagan," returned Dr. Renton, stepping in, after a
pause, and shutting the door. "But I'm afraid she's in bed."

"Naw--she's not, sur." Mr. Flanagan made another feint with the boot and
lamp at the stairs, but stopped again in curious bewilderment, and
rubbed his head. Then, with another inspiration, and speaking with such
velocity that his words ran into each other, pell-mell, he continued:
"Th' small girl's sick, sur. Begorra, I wor just pullin' on th' boots
tuh gaw for the docther, in th' nixt streth, an' summons him to her
relehf, for it's bad she is. A'id betther be goan." Another start, and a
movement to put on the boot instantly, baffled by his getting the lamp
into the leg of it, and involving himself in difficulties in trying to
get it out again without dropping either, and stopped finally by Dr.
Renton.

"You needn't go, Mr. Flanagan. I'll see to the child. Don't go."

He stepped slowly up the stairs, followed by the bewildered Flanagan.
All this time Dr. Renton was listening to the racket from the bar-room.
Clinking of glasses, rattling of dishes, trampling of feet, oaths and
laughter, and a confused din of coarse voices, mingling with boisterous
calls for oysters and drink, came, hardly deadened by the partition
walls, from the haunt below, and echoed through the corridors. Loud
enough within--louder in the street without, where the oysters and drink
were reeling and roaring off to brutal dreams. People trying to sleep
here; a sick child up stairs. Listen! "_Two_ stew! _One_ roast! _Four_
ale! Hurry 'em up! _Three_ stew! _In_ number six! _One_ fancy--_two_
roast! _One_ sling! Three brandy--_hot_! _Two_ stew! _One_ whisk'
_skin_! Hurry 'em up! _What_ yeh _'bout_! _Three_ brand' punch--_hot_!
_Four_ stew! _What_-ye-e-h 'BOUT! _Two_ gin-cock-t'il! _One_ stew!
Hu-r-r-y 'em up!" Clashing, rattling, cursing, swearing, laughing,
shouting, trampling, stumbling, driving, slamming, of doors. "Hu-r-ry
'em UP."

"Flanagan," said Dr. Renton, stopping at the first landing, "do you have
this noise every night?"

"Naise? Hoo! Divil a night, docther, but I'm wehked out ov me bed wid
'em, Sundays an' all. Sure didn't they murdher wan of 'em, out an' out,
last night!"

"Is the man dead?"

"Dead? Troth he is. An' cowld."

"H'm"--through his compressed lips. "Flanagan, you needn't come up. I
know the door. Just hold the light for me here. There, that'll do. Thank
you." He whispered the last words from the top of the second flight.

"Are ye there, docther?" Flanagan anxious to the last, and trying to
peer up at him with the lamp-light in his eyes.

"Yes. That'll do. Thank you!" in the same whisper. Before he could tap
at the door, then darkening in the receding light, it opened suddenly,
and a big Irish woman bounced out, and then whisked in again, calling to
some one in an inner room: "Here he is, Mrs. Mill'r," and then bounced
out again, with a "Walk royt in, if _you_ plaze; here's the choild"--and
whisked in again, with a "Sure an' Jehms was quick;" never once looking
at him, and utterly unconscious of the presence of her landlord. He had
hardly stepped into the room and taken off his hat, when Mrs. Miller
came from the inner chamber with a lamp in her hand. How she started!
With her pale face grown suddenly paler, and her hand on her bosom, she
could only exclaim: "Why, it's Dr. Renton!" and stand, still and dumb,
gazing with a frightened look at his face, whiter than her own.
Whereupon Mrs. Flanagan came bolting out again, with wild eyes and a
sort of stupefied horror in her good, coarse, Irish features; and then,
with some uncouth ejaculation, ran back, and was heard to tumble over
something within, and tumble something else over in her fall, and gather
herself up with a subdued howl, and subside.

"Mrs. Miller," began Dr. Renton, in a low, husky voice, glancing at her
frightened face, "I hope you'll be composed. I spoke to you very harshly
and rudely to-night; but I really was not myself--I was in anger--and I
ask your pardon. Please to overlook it all, and--but I will speak of
this presently; now--I am a physician; will you let me look now at your
sick child?"

He spoke hurriedly, but with evident sincerity. For a moment her lips
faltered; then a slow flush came up, with a quick change of expression
on her thin, worn face, and, reddening to painful scarlet, died away in
a deeper pallor.

"Dr. Renton," she said, hastily, "I have no ill-feeling for you, sir,
and I know you were hurt and vexed--and I know you have tried to make it
up to me again, sir--secretly. I know who it was, now; but I can't take
it, sir. You must take it back. You know it was you sent it, sir?"

"Mrs. Miller," he replied, puzzled beyond measure, "I don't understand
you. What do you mean?"

"Don't deny it, sir. Please not to," she said imploringly, the tears
starting to her eyes. "I am very grateful--indeed I am. But I can't
accept it. Do take it again."

"Mrs. Miller," he replied, in a hasty voice, "what do you mean? I have
sent you nothing--nothing at all. I have, therefore, nothing to receive
again."

She looked at him fixedly, evidently impressed by the fervor of his
denial.

"You sent me nothing to-night, sir?" she asked, doubtfully.

"Nothing at any time--nothing," he answered, firmly.

It would have been folly to have disbelieved the truthful look of his
wondering face, and she turned away in amazement and confusion. There
was a long pause.

"I hope, Mrs. Miller, you will not refuse any assistance I can render to
your child," he said, at length.

She started, and replied, tremblingly and confusedly, "No, sir; we shall
be grateful to you, if you can save her"--and went quickly, with a
strange abstraction on her white face, into the inner room. He followed
her at once, and, hardly glancing at Mrs. Flanagan, who sat there in
stupefaction, with her apron over her head and face, he laid his hat on
a table, went to the bedside of the little girl, and felt her head and
pulse. He soon satisfied himself that the little sufferer was in no
danger, under proper remedies, and now dashed down a prescription on a
leaf from his pocket-book. Mrs. Flanagan, who had come out from the
retirement of her apron, to stare stupidly at him during the
examination, suddenly bobbed up on her legs, with enlightened alacrity,
when he asked if there was any one that could go out to the
apothecary's, and said, "sure I wull!" He had a little trouble to make
her understand that the prescription, which she took by the corner,
holding it away from her, as if it were going to explode presently, and
staring at it upside down--was to be left--"_left_, mind you, Mrs.
Flanagan--with the apothecary--Mr. Flint--at the nearest corner--and he
will give you some things, which you are to bring here." But she had
shuffled off at last with a confident, "yis, sur--aw, I knoo," her head
nodding satisfied assent, and her big thumb covering the note on the
margin, "charge to Dr. C. Renton, Bowdoin street," (which _I_ know,
could not keep it from the eyes of the angels!) and he sat down to await
her return.

"Mrs. Miller," he said, kindly, "don't be alarmed about your child. She
is doing well; and, after you have given her the medicine Mrs. Flanagan
will bring, you'll find her much better, to-morrow. She must be kept
cool and quiet, you know, and she'll be all right soon."

"Oh! Dr. Renton, I am very grateful," was the tremulous reply; "and we
will follow all directions, sir. It is hard to keep her quiet, sir; we
keep as still as we can, and the other children are very still; but the
street is very noisy all the daytime and evening, sir, and--"

"I know it, Mrs. Miller. And I'm afraid those people down-stairs disturb
you somewhat."

"They make some stir in the evening, sir; and it's rather loud in the
street sometimes, at night. The folks on the lower floors are troubled a
good deal, they say."

Well they may be. Listen to the bawling outside, now, cold as it is.
Hark! A hoarse group on the opposite sidewalk beginning a song. "Ro-o-l
on, sil-ver mo-o-n"--. The silver moon ceases to roll in a sudden
explosion of yells and laughter, sending up broken fragments of curses,
ribald jeers, whoopings, and cat-calls, high into the night air.
"Ga-l-a-ng! Hi-hi! What ye-e-h _'bout_!"

"This is outrageous, Mrs. Miller. Where's the watchman?"

She smiled faintly. "He takes one of them off occasionally, sir; but
he's afraid; they beat him sometimes." A long pause.

"Isn't your room rather cold, Mrs. Miller?" He glanced at the black
stove, dimly seen in the outer room. "It is necessary to keep the rooms
cool just now, but this air seems to me cold."

Receiving no answer, he looked at her, and saw the sad truth in her
averted face.

"I beg your pardon," he said quickly, flushing to the roots of his hair.
"I might have known, after what you said to me this evening."

"We had a little fire here to-day, sir," she said, struggling with the
pride and shame of poverty; "but we have been out of firing for two or
three days, and we owe the wharfman something now. The two boys picked
up a few chips; but the poor children find it hard to get them, sir.
Times are very hard with us, sir; indeed they are. We'd have got along
better, if my husband's money had come, and your rent would have been
paid--"

"Never mind the rent!--don't speak of that!" he broke in, with his face
all aglow. "Mrs. Miller, I haven't done right by you--I know it. Be
frank with me. Are you in want of--have you--need of--food?"

No need of answer to that faintly stammered question. The thin, rigid
face was covered from his sight by the worn, wan hands, and all the
pride and shame of poverty, and all the frigid truth of cold, hunger,
anxiety, and sickened sorrow they had concealed, had given way at last
in a rush of tears. He could not speak. With a smitten heart, he knew it
all now. Ah! Dr. Renton, you know these people's tricks? you know their
lying blazon of poverty, to gather sympathy?

"Mrs. Miller"--she had ceased weeping, and as he spoke, she looked at
him, with the tear-stains still on her agitated face, half ashamed that
he had seen her--"Mrs. Miller, I am sorry. This shall be remedied. Don't
tell me it shan't! Don't! I say it shall! Mrs. Miller, I'm--I'm ashamed
of myself. I am, indeed."

"I am very grateful, sir, I'm sure," said she; "but we don't like to
take charity though we need help; but we can get along now, sir--for, I
suppose I must keep it, as you say you didn't send it, and use it for
the children's sake, and thank God for his good mercy--since I don't
know, and never shall, where it came from, now."

"Mrs. Miller," he said quickly, "you spoke in this way before; and I
don't know what you refer to. What do you mean by--_it_?"

"Oh! I forgot sir: it puzzles me so. You see, sir, I was sitting here
after I got home from your house, thinking what I should do, when Mrs.
Flanagan came up-stairs with a letter for me, that she said a strange
man left at the door for Mrs. Miller; and Mrs. Flanagan couldn't
describe him well, or understandingly; and it had no direction at all,
only the man inquired who was the landlord, and if Mrs. Miller had a
sick child, and then said the letter was for me; and there was no
writing inside the letter, but there was fifty dollars. That's all, sir.
It gave me a great shock, sir; and I couldn't think who sent it, only
when you came to-night, I thought it was you; but you said it wasn't,
and I never shall know who it was, now. It seems as if the hand of God
was in it, sir, for it came when everything was darkest, and I was in
despair."

"Why, Mrs. Miller," he slowly answered, "this is very mysterious. The
man inquired if I was the owner of the house--oh! no--he only inquired
who was--but then he knew I was the--oh! bother! I'm getting nowhere.
Let's see. Why, it must be some one you know, or that knows your
circumstances."

"But there's no one knows them but yourself; and I told you," she
replied; "no one else but the people in the house. It must have been
some rich person, for the letter was a gilt-edge sheet, and there was
perfume in it, sir."

"Strange," he murmured. "Well, I give it up. All is, I advise you to
keep it, and I'm very glad some one did his duty by you in your hour of
need, though I'm sorry it was not myself. Here's Mrs. Flanagan."

There was a good deal done, and a great burden lifted off an humble
heart--nay, two! before Dr. Renton thought of going home. There was a
patient gained, likely to do Dr. Renton more good than any patient he
had lost. There was a kettle singing on the stove, and blowing off a
happier steam than any engine ever blew on that railroad, whose
unmarketable stock had singed Dr. Renton's fingers. There was a yellow
gleam flickering from the blazing fire on the sober binding of a good
old Book upon a shelf with others, a rarer medical work than ever
slipped at auction from Dr. Renton's hands, since it kept the sacred
lore of Him who healed the sick, and fed the hungry, and comforted the
poor, and who was also the Physician of souls.

And there were other offices performed, of lesser range than these,
before he rose to go. There were cooling mixtures blended for the sick
child; medicines arranged; directions given; and all the items of her
tendance orderly foreseen, and put in pigeon-holes of When and How, for
service.

At last he rose to go. "And now, Mrs. Miller," he said, "I'll come here
at ten in the morning, and see to our patient. She'll be nicely by that
time. And--(listen to those brutes in the street!--twelve o'clock,
too--ah! there's the bell),--as I was saying, my offence to you being
occasioned by your debt to me, I feel my receipt for your debt should
commence my reparation to you; and I'll bring it to-morrow. Mrs. Miller
you don't quite come at me--what I mean is--you owe me, under a notice
to quit, three months' rent. Consider that paid in full. I never will
take a cent of it from you--not a copper. And I take back the notice.
Stay in my house as long as you like; the longer the better. But, up to
this date, your rent's paid. There. I hope you'll have as happy a
Christmas as circumstances will allow, and I mean you shall."

A flush of astonishment--of indefinable emotion, overspread her face.

"Dr. Renton, stop, sir!" He was moving to the door. "Please, sir, _do_
hear me! You are very good--but I can't allow you to--Dr. Renton, we are
able to pay you the rent, and we _will_, and we _must_--here--now. Oh!
sir, my gratefulness will never fail to you--but here--here--be fair
with me, sir, and _do_ take it!"

She had hurried to a chest of drawers, and came back with the letter
which she had rustled apart with eager, trembling hands, and now,
unfolding the single bank-note it had contained, she thrust it into his
fingers as they closed.

"Here, Mrs. Miller"--she had drawn back with her arms locked on her
bosom, and he stepped forward--"no, no. This shan't be. Come, come, you
must take it back. Good heavens!" he spoke low, but his eyes blazed in
the red glow which broke out on his face, and the crisp note in his
extended hand shook violently at her--"Sooner than take this money from
you, I would perish in the street! What! Do you think I will rob you of
the gift sent you by some one who had a human heart for the distresses I
was aggravating? Sooner than--here, take it! O my God! what's this?"

The red glow on his face went out, with this exclamation, in a pallor
like marble, and he jerked back the note to his starting eyes; Globe
Bank--Boston--Fifty Dollars. For a minute he gazed at the motionless
bill in his hand. Then, with his hueless lips compressed, he seized the
blank letter from his astonished tenant, and looked at it, turning it
over and over. Grained letter-paper--gilt-edged--with a favorite perfume
in it. Where's Mrs. Flanagan? Outside the door, sitting on the top of
the stairs, with her apron over her head, crying. Mrs. Flanagan! Here!
In she tumbled, her big feet kicking her skirts before her, and her eyes
and face as red as a beet.

"Mrs. Flanagan, what kind of a looking man gave you this letter at the
door to-night?"

"A-w, Docther Rinton, dawn't ax me!--Bother, an' all, an' sure an' I
cudn't see him wud his fur-r hat, an' he a-ll boondled oop wud his co-at
oop on his e-ars, an' his big han'kershuf smotherin' thuh mouth uv him,
an' sorra a bit uv him tuh be looked at, sehvin' thuh poomple on thuh
ind uv his naws."

"The _what_ on the end of his nose?"

"Thuh poomple, sur."

"What does she mean, Mrs. Miller?" said the puzzled questioner, turning
to his tenant.

"I don't know, sir, indeed," was the reply; "she said that to me, and I
couldn't understand her."

"It's thuh poomple, docther. Dawn't ye knoo? Thuh big, flehmin poomple
oop there." She indicated the locality, by flattening the rude tip of
her own nose with her broad forefinger.

"Oh! the pimple! I have it." So he had. Netty, Netty!

He said nothing, but sat down in a chair, with his bold, white brow
knitted, and the warm tears in his dark eyes.

"You know who sent it, sir, don't you?" asked his wondering tenant,
catching the meaning of all this.

"Mrs. Miller, I do. But I cannot tell you. Take it, now, and use it. It
is doubly yours. There. Thank you."

She had taken it with an emotion in her face that gave a quicker motion
to his throbbing heart. He rose to his feet, hat in hand, and turned
away. The noise of a passing group of roysterers in the street without,
came strangely loud into the silence of that room.

"Good night, Mrs. Miller. I'll be here in the morning. Good night."

"Good night, sir. God bless you, sir!"

He turned around quickly. The warm tears in his dark eyes had flowed on
his face, which was pale; and his firm lip quivered.

"I hope He will, Mrs. Miller--I hope He will. It should have been said
oftener."

He was on the outer threshold. Mrs. Flanagan had, somehow, got there
before him, with a lamp, and he followed her down through the dancing
shadows, with blurred eyes. On the lower landing he stopped to hear the
jar of some noisy wrangle, thick with oaths, from the bar-room. He
listened for a moment, and then turned to the staring stupor of Mrs.
Flanagan's rugged visage.

"Sure, they're at ut, docther, wud a wull," she said, smiling.

"Yes. Mrs. Flanagan, you'll stay up with Mrs. Miller to-night, won't
you?"

"Dade an' I wull, sur."

"That's right. Do. And make her try and sleep, for she must be tired.
Keep up a fire--not too warm, you understand. There'll be wood and coal
coming to-morrow, and she'll pay you back."

"A-w, docther, dawn't noo!"

"Well, well. And--look here; have you got anything to eat in the house?
Yes; well; take it up-stairs. Wake up those two boys, and give them
something to eat. Don't let Mrs. Miller stop you. Make her eat
something. Tell her I said she must. And, first of all, get your bonnet,
and go to that apothecary's--Flint's--for a bottle of port wine, for
Mrs. Miller. Hold on. There's the order." (He had a leaf out of his
pocket-book in a minute, and wrote it down.) "Go with this, the first
thing. Ring Flint's bell, and he'll wake up. And here's something for
your own Christmas dinner, to-morrow." Out of the roll of bills, he drew
one of the tens--Globe Bank--Boston--and gave it to Mrs. Flanagan.

"A-w, dawn't noo, docther."

"Bother! It's for yourself, mind. Take it. There. And now unlock the
door. That's it. Good night, Mrs. Flanagan."

"An' meh thuh Hawly Vurgin hape blessn's on ye, Docther Rinton, wud a-ll
thuh compliments uv thuh sehzin, for yur thuh--"

He lost the end of Mrs. Flanagan's parting benedictions in the moonlit
street. He did not pause till he was at the door of the oyster-room. He
paused then, to make way for a tipsy company of four, who reeled
out--the gaslight from the bar-room on the edges of their sodden,
distorted faces--giving three shouts and a yell, as they slammed the
door behind them.

He pushed after a party that was just entering. They went at once for
drink to the upper end of the room, where a rowdy crew, with cigars in
their mouths, and liquor in their hands, stood before the bar, in a
knotty wrangle concerning some one who was killed. Where is the keeper?
Oh! there he is, mixing hot brandy punch for two. Here, you, sir, go up
quietly, and tell Mr. Rollins Dr. Renton wants to see him. The waiter
came back presently to say Mr. Rollins would be right along. Twenty-five
minutes past twelve. Oyster trade nearly over. Gaudy-curtained booths on
the left all empty but two. Oyster-openers and waiters--three of them in
all--nearly done for the night, and two of them sparring and scuffling
behind a pile of oysters on the trough, with the colored print of the
great prize fight between Tom Hyer and Yankee Sullivan, in a veneered
frame above them on the wall. Blower up from the fire opposite the bar,
and stewpans and griddles empty and idle on the bench beside it, among
the unwashed bowls and dishes. Oyster trade nearly over. Bar still busy.

Here comes Rollins in his shirt sleeves, with an apron on. Thick-set,
muscular man--frizzled head, low forehead, sharp, black eyes, flabby
face, with a false, greasy smile on it now, oiling over a curious,
stealthy expression of mingled surprise and inquiry, as he sees his
landlord here at this unusual hour.

"Come in here, Mr. Rollins; I want to speak to you."

"Yes, sir. Jim" (to the waiter), "go and tend bar." They sat down in one
of the booths, and lowered the curtain. Dr. Renton, at one side of the
table within, looking at Rollins, sitting leaning on his folded arms, at
the other side.

"Mr. Rollins, I am told the man who was stabbed here last night is dead.
Is that so?"

"Well, he is, Dr. Renton. Died this afternoon."

"Mr. Rollins, this is a serious matter; what are you going to do about
it?"

"Can't help it, sir. Who's a-goin' to touch _me_? Called in a watchman.
Whole mess of 'em had cut. Who knows 'em? Nobody knows 'em. Man that was
stuck never see the fellers as stuck him in all his life till then.
Didn't know which one of 'em did it. Didn't know nothing. Don't now, an'
never will, 'nless he meets 'em in hell. That's all. Feller's dead, an'
who's a-goin' to touch _me_? Can't do it. Ca-n-'t do it."

"Mr. Rollins," said Dr. Renton, thoroughly disgusted with this man's
brutal indifference, "your lease expires in three days."

"Well, it does. Hope to make a renewal with you, Dr. Renton. Trade's
good here. Shouldn't mind more rent on, if you insist--hope you
won't--if it's anything in reason. Promise sollum, I shan't have no more
fightin' in here. Couldn't help this. Accidents _will_ happen, yo'
know."

"Mr. Rollins, the case is this: if you didn't sell liquor here, you'd
have no murder done in your place--murder, sir. That man was murdered.
It's your fault, and it's mine, too. I ought not to have let you the
place for your business. It _is_ a cursed traffic, and you and I ought
to have found it out long ago. _I_ have. I hope _you_ will. Now, I
advise you, as a friend, to give up selling rum for the future: you see
what it comes to--don't you? At any rate, I will not be responsible for
the outrages that are perpetrated in my building any more--I will not
have liquor sold here. I refuse to renew your lease. In three days you
must move."

"Dr Renton, you hurt my feelin's. Now, how would you--"

"Mr. Rollins, I have spoken to you as a friend, and you have no cause
for pain. You must quit these premises when your lease expires. I'm
sorry I can't make you go before that. Make no appeals to me, if you
please. I am fixed. Now, sir, good-night."

The curtain was pulled up, and Rollins rolled over to his beloved bar,
soothing his lacerated feelings by swearing like a pirate, while Dr.
Renton strode to the door, and went into the street, homeward.

He walked fast through the magical moonlight, with a strange feeling of
sternness, and tenderness, and weariness, in his mind. In this mood, the
sensation of spiritual and physical fatigue gaming on him, but a quiet
moonlight in all his reveries, he reached his house. He was just putting
his latch-key in the door, when it was opened by James, who stared at
him for a second, and then dropped his eyes, and put his hand before his
nose. Dr. Renton compressed his lips on an involuntary smile.

"Ah! James, you're up late. It's near one."

"I sat up for Mrs. Renton and the young lady, sir. They're just come,
and gone up stairs."

"All right, James. Take your lamp and come in here. I've got something
to say to you." The man followed him into the library at once, with some
wonder on his sleepy face.

"First, put some coal on that fire, and light the chandelier. I shall
not go up stairs to-night." The man obeyed. "Now, James, sit down in
that chair." He did so, beginning to look frightened at Dr. Renton's
grave manner.

"James"--a long pause--"I want you to tell me the truth. Where did you
go to-night? Come, I have found you out. Speak."

The man turned as white as a sheet, and looked wretched with the whites
of his bulging eyes, and the great pimple on his nose awfully distinct
in the livid hue of his features. He was a rather slavish fellow, and
thought he was going to lose his situation. Please not to blame him, for
he, too, was one of the poor.

"Oh! Dr. Renton, excuse me, sir; I didn't mean doing any harm."

"James, my daughter gave you an undirected letter this evening; you
carried it to one of my houses in Hanover street. Is that true?"

"Ye-yes, sir. I couldn't help it. I only did what she told me, sir."

"James, if my daughter told you to set fire to this house, what would
you do?"

"I wouldn't do it, sir," he stammered, after some hesitation.

"You wouldn't? James, if my daughter ever tells you to set fire to this
house, do it, sir! Do it. At once. Do whatever she tells you. Promptly.
And I'll back you."

The man stared wildly at him, as he received this astonishing command.
Dr. Renton was perfectly grave, and had spoken slowly and seriously. The
man was at his wits' end.

"You'll do it James--will you?"

"Ye-yes, sir, certainly."

"That's right. James, you're a good fellow. James, you've got a
family--a wife and children--hav'n't you?"

"Yes, sir, I have; living in the country, sir. In Chelsea, over the
ferry. For cheapness, sir."

"For cheapness, eh? Hard times, James? How is it?"

"Pretty hard, sir. Close, but toler'ble comfortable. Rub and go, sir."

"Rub and go. Ve-r-y well. Rub and go. James, I'm going to raise your
wages--to-morrow. Generally, because you're a good servant. Principally,
because you carried that letter to-night, when my daughter asked you. I
shan't forget it. To-morrow, mind. And if I can do anything for you,
James, at any time, just tell me. That's all. Now, you'd better go to
bed. And a happy Christmas to you!"

"Much obliged to you, sir. Same to you and many of 'em. Good-night,
sir." And with Dr. Renton's "good-night" he stole up to bed, thoroughly
happy, and determined to obey Miss Renton's future instructions to the
letter. The shower of golden light which had been raining for the last
two hours, had fallen, even on him. It would fall all day to-morrow in
many places, and the day after, and for long years to come. Would that
it could broaden and increase to a general deluge, and submerge the
world!

Now the whole house was still, and its master was weary. He sat there,
quietly musing, feeling the sweet and tranquil presence near him. Now
the fire was screened, the lights were out, save one dim glimmer, and he
had lain down on the couch with the letter in his hand, and slept the
dreamless sleep of a child.

He slept until the gray dawn of Christmas day stole into the room, and
showed him the figure of his friend, a shape of glorious light, standing
by his side, and gazing at him with large and tender eyes! He had no
fear. All was deep, serene, and happy with the happiness of heaven.
Looking up into that beautiful, wan face--so tranquil--so radiant;
watching, with a child-like awe, the star-fire in those shadowy eyes;
smiling faintly, with a great, unutterable love thrilling slowly through
his frame, in answer to the smile of light that shone upon the phantom
countenance; so he passed a space of time which seemed a calm eternity,
till, at last, the communion of spirit with spirit--of mortal love with
love immortal--was perfected, and the shining hands were laid on his
forehead, as with a touch of air. Then the phantom smiled, and, as its
shining hands were withdrawn, the thought of his daughter mingled in the
vision. She was bending over him! The dawn--the room, were the same. But
the ghost of Feval had gone out from earth, away to its own land!

"Father, dear father! Your eyes were open, and they did not look at me.
There is a light on your face, and your features are changed! What is
it--what have you seen?"

"Hush, darling: here--kneel by me, for a little while, and be still. I
have seen the dead."

She knelt by him, burying her awe-struck face in his bosom, and clung to
him with all the fervor of her soul. He clasped her to his breast, and
for minutes all was still.

"Dear child--good and dear child!"

The voice was tremulous and low. She lifted her fair, bright
countenance, now convulsed with a secret trouble, and dimmed with
streaming tears, to his, and gazed on him. His eyes were shining; but
his pallid cheeks, like hers, were wet with tears. How still the room
was! How like a thought of solemn tenderness, the pale gray dawn! The
world was far away, and his soul still wandered in the peaceful awe of
his dream. The world was coming back to him--but oh! how changed!--in
the trouble of his daughter's face.

"Darling, what is it? Why are you here? Why are you weeping? Dear child,
the friend of my better days--of the boyhood when I had noble aims, and
life was beautiful before me--he has been here! I have seen him. He has
been with me--oh! for a good I cannot tell!"

"Father, dear father!"--he had risen, and sat upon the couch, but she
still knelt before him, weeping, and clasped his hands in hers--"I
thought of you and of this letter, all the time. All last night till I
slept, and then I dreamed you were tearing it to pieces, and trampling
on it. I awoke, and lay thinking of you, and of ----. And I thought I
heard you come down-stairs, and I came here to find you. But you were
lying here so quietly, with your eyes open, and so strange a light on
your face. And I knew--I knew you were dreaming of him, and that you saw
him, for the letter lay beside you. O father! forgive me, but do hear
me! In the name of this day--it's Christmas day, father--in the name of
the time when we must both die--in the name of that time, father, hear
me! That poor woman last night--O father! forgive me, but don't tear
that letter in pieces and trample it under foot! You know what I
mean--you know--you know. Don't tear it, and tread it under foot!"

She clung to him, sobbing violently, her face buried in his hands.

"Hush, hush! It's all well--it's all well. Here, sit by me. So. I
have"--his voice failed him, and he paused. But sitting by him--clinging
to him--her face hidden in his bosom--she heard the strong beating of
his disenchanted heart!

"My child, I know your meaning. I will not tear the letter to pieces and
trample it under foot. God forgive me my life's slight to those words.
But I learned their value last night, in the house where your blank
letter had entered before me."

She started, and looked into his face steadfastly, while a bright
scarlet shot into her own.

"I know all, Netty--all. Your secret was well kept, but it is yours and
mine now. It was well done, darling--well done. Oh! I have been through
strange mysteries of thought and life since that starving woman sat
here! Well--thank God!"

"Father, what have you done?" The flush had failed, but a glad color
still brightened her face, while the tears stood trembling in her eyes.

"All that you wished yesterday," he answered. "And all that you ever
could have wished, henceforth I will do."

"O father!"--She stopped. The bright scarlet shot again into her face,
but with an April shower of tears, and the rainbow of a smile.

"Listen to me, Netty, and I will tell you, and only you, what I have
done." Then, while she mutely listened, sitting by his side, and the
dawn of Christmas broadened into Christmas-day, he told her all.

And when he had told all, and emotion was stilled, they sat together in
silence for a time, she with her innocent head drooped upon his
shoulder, and her eyes closed, lost in tender and mystic reveries; and
he musing with a contrite heart. Till at last, the stir of daily life
began to waken in the quiet dwelling, and without, from steeples in the
frosty air, there was a sound of bells.

They rose silently, and stood, clinging to each other, side by side.

"Love, we must part," he said, gravely and tenderly. "Read me, before we
go, the closing lines of George Feval's letter. In the spirit of this
let me strive to live. Let it be for me the lesson of the day. Let it
also be the lesson of my life."

Her face was pale and lit with exaltation as she took the letter from
his hand. There was a pause--and then upon the thrilling and tender
silver of her voice, the words arose like solemn music:

"_Farewell--farewell! But, oh! take my counsel into memory on Christmas
Day, and forever. Once again, the ancient prophecy of peace and
good-will shines on a world of wars and wrongs and woes. Its soft ray
shines into the darkness of a land wherein swarm slaves, poor laborers,
social pariahs, weeping women, homeless exiles, hunted fugitives,
despised aliens, drunkards, convicts, wicked children, and Magdalens
unredeemed. These are but the ghastliest figures in that sad army of
humanity which advances, by a dreadful road, to the Golden Age of the
poets' dream. These are your sisters and your brothers. Love them all.
Beware of wronging one of them by word or deed. O friend! strong in
wealth for so much good--take my last counsel. In the name of the
Saviour, I charge you, be true and tender to mankind! Come out from
Babylon into manhood, and live and labor for the fallen, the neglected,
the suffering, and the poor. Lover of arts, customs, laws, institutions,
and forms of society, love these things only as they help mankind! With
stern love, overturn them, or help to overturn them, when they become
cruel to a single--the humblest--human being. In the world's scale,
social position, influence, public power, the applause of majorities,
heaps of funded gold, services rendered to creeds, codes, sects,
parties, or federations--they weigh weight; but in God's
scale--remember!--on the day of hope, remember!--your least service to
Humanity, outweighs them all!_"







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