lock. Mr. Flint goes home to doze over a diminutive glass of
sherry. He holds it up between his eyes and the light, smiling to see the
liquid jewels, and wishes that they were real rubies. Flint! they are red
tears, and not jewels which glisten in your glass, for you crushed the
poor, and took advantage of the unfortunate to buy this pleasant blood
which pulses in your brittle chalice!

That night he thought of a pair of blue, innocent eyes which once looked
pleadingly in his--of two tiny arms that were once wound fondly around his
neck. Those eyes haunted him into the misty realm of dreams, where myriads
of little arms were stretched out to him; and he turned restlessly on his
pillow. Ah, Flint, there is an invisible and powerful spirit in the heart
of every man that _will_ speak. It whispers to the criminal in his cell;
and the downy pillows and sumptuous drapery around the couch of Wealth
cannot keep it away at midnight.

There is not a house but has its skeleton. There is a ghastly one in
Flint's.

The silvery lips in Trinity steeple chime the hour of eleven; St. Paul's
catch it up, and hosts of belfrys toss the hour to and fro like a
shuttle-cork. Then the goblin bells hush themselves to sleep again in their
dizzy nests, murmuring, murmuring!--and the pen of the pale book-keeper
keeps time with the ticking of the office time-piece.

It is nearly twelve o'clock when he reaches the door of a common two-story
house in Marion-street. The door is opened before he can turn the bolt with
his night-key, and the whitest possible little hand presses his. He draws
it within his own, and places his arm around the daintiest little waist
that ever submitted to the operation. Then the two enter the front parlor,
where the dim light falls on Mortimer and a beautiful girl on the verge of
womanhood. She looks into his face, and his lips touch a tress of chestnut
hair which has fallen over his shoulder.

"You are very pale. Have you been unwell to-day?"

"No, Daisy," and he bends down and kisses her.

"Why do you persist in sitting up for me? I shall scold if you spoil your
cheeks. Kiss me, Daisy."

The girl pouts, and declares she won't, as she coquettishly twines her arms
around his neck, and Mortimer has such a kiss as all Flint's bank stock
could not buy him--a pure, earnest kiss. He was rich, poor in the world's
eye, richer than Flint, with his corpulent money bags, God pity him!

They sit a long while without speaking.