o the house so happy and hopeful, he left it so
anxious and angry--yes, angry. He knew well that he had no just cause
for anger, but that knowledge only irritated him the more. Souls, as
well as bodies, are subject to malignant diseases, and to-night envy
and jealousy were causing James Blackie more acute suffering than any
attack of fever or contagion. A feeling of dislike towards young
Donald McFarlane had taken possession of his heart; he lay awake to
make a mental picture of the youth, and then he hated the picture he
had made.

Feverish and miserable, he went next morning to the bank in which he
was employed, and endeavored amid the perplexities of compound
interest to forget the anxieties he had invented for himself. But it
was beyond his power, and he did not pray about them; for the burdens
we bind on our own shoulders we rarely dare to go to God with, and
James might have known from this circumstance alone that his trouble
was no lawful one. He nursed it carefully all day and took it to bed
with him again at night. The next day he had begun to understand how
envy grew to hatred, and hatred to murder. Still he did not go to God
for help, and still he kept ever before his eyes the image of the
youth that he had determined was to be his enemy.

On Thursday night he could no longer bear his uncertainties. He
dressed himself carefully and went to David Cameron's. David was in
his shop tasting and buying teas, and apparently absorbed in business.
He merely nodded to James, and bid him "walk through." He had no
intention of being less kindly than usual, but James was in such a
suspicious temper that he took his preoccupation for coolness, and so
it was almost with a resentful feeling he opened the half-glass door
dividing the shop from the parlor.

As his heart had foretold him, there sat the youth whom he had
determined to hate, but his imagination had greatly deceived him with
regard to his appearance. He had thought of Donald only as a "fair,
false Highlander" in tartan, kilt, and philibeg. He found him a tall,
dark youth, richly dressed in the prevailing Southern fashion, and
retaining no badge of his country's costume but the little Glengary
cap with its chieftain's token of an eagle's feather. His manners were
not rude and haughty, as James had decided they would be; they were
singularly frank and pleasant. Gracious and graceful, exceedingly
handsome and light-hearted, he was likely to prove a far more
dange