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'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, scntentiously.

"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 isʼhigh, 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 Balti more 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."

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"Dr. Renton," she said faintly, "I have a sick child-how can I move now? O, 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.

66

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

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Dr. Renton sank again into his chair. His tenant-not a woman!--not a sister, 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.

Mrs. Miller, paler than before, had sat mute and trembling among the hopes he had 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 us 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 sank down again. There was a pause. Then, solemnly gliding across the lighted room, the phantom stole to her side with glory of compassion on its features. Tenderly, as a son to a mother, it bent over her; its spectral hands of light were stretched above her; its shadowy fall of hair, once blanched by the fever and the anguish, floated on her throbbing brow.

The stern and sullen mood from which had dropped but one fierce flash of anger, still hung above the heat of the doctor's 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. might have flamed violently, had his tenant made any further attempt to

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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 feeling 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, by his side.

Dr. Renton 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 all men!" 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 thrown himself on a sofa, striving to be rid of his remorseful thoughts, 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 again, 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. Dr. Renton 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.

Rising from the sofa, the doctor turned down the lights of the chandelier, and screened the fire. The room was still. The ghost stood, faintly radiant, in a remote corner. Dr. Renton lay down again, but he could not sleep. Things he had forgotten of his dead friend, now started up again in remembrance, fresh from the sleep of many years; and not one of them but linked itself with some mysterious bond

to something connected with his tenant, and became an accusation.

He had lain thus for more than an hour, 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. Low and sad at first, he heard it swell and rise to a mournful dirge, but so subdued, that it touched him with awe. Gradually the fires in his brain sank down, and all yielded to a sense of coolness and repose.

Gradually sinking, also, the music failed. A pause, and then it rose again, blended with the solemn voices of the choir. It rose from pathos into wild despair; and, swelling upward in an agony of supplication, sank, and died in a low and wailing sigh.

Yielding now with a sense in his spirit like despair, the tears streamed silently down the listener's face; and the low chant sighed above him, and died away. Dr. Renton slept. 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 pitcous sight, to see its idle efforts on these shapes of grosser matter, which, to its strengthless essence, had now 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 the 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 doctor suddenly awoke.

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.

In a moment, remembering the letter to which the phantom of his dream had pointed, he rose 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 turned away. A physician-he remembered that he was in a violent state of nervous excitement, and thought that when he grew calmer its effects would pass away. 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 sense 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 thingwas 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 afterwards 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 by-ways, 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. At last he was haunted with a gathering sense that his journey was coming to an end. And suddenly, thank God! the goblin was gone. He was free. He stood panting, like one just roused from some terrific dream, wiping the reeking perspiration from his forehead. 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. 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

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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 its meaning. 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. Dazzled 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 riot, and the barroom 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 all men!" 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 dramshop, 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. 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.

Murder was done, or

With this he was conquered, and then the 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 tonight?"

"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 an

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