self into a chair, and a vision of
the Past rose up before him--the terrible Past. The ghosts of dead years
haunted his brain, and remorse sat on his heart, boding and mysterious,
like the Raven of the sweet poet--

"That unhappy master, whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast, and followed faster, till his songs one burden bore!"

That night, as we have said, he dreamt of two blue, innocent eyes, which
once looked confidingly in his--of two infant arms which encircled his
neck. Those eyes haunted him into the realm of sleep, where myriads of
little arms were stretched out to him, and he turned restlessly on his
pillow!

VIII.

_He trudged along, unknowing what he sought,
And whistled as he went, for want of thought._

DRYDEN.

VIII.

MR. FLINT IS PERFECTLY ASTONISHED, AND MORTIMER HAS A VISION.

_The Light Heart--A Scene--The Sunny Heart--A Dream of Little Bell--A
Hint._

Now that Mortimer Walters had destroyed the record of poor Snarle's guilt,
he determined to be no longer a subject of Flint's authority. He had
watched for months for an opportunity to become possessed of the forged
cheque; and it was with a heart as light as a singing bird's that he
tripped up the office stairs an hour before his time the next morning.

Tim was sweeping out.

Sleep had left no cobwebs in his young eyes; but when he saw Mortimer throw
open the office door, humming a light-hearted air, he rubbed his eyelids
with the sleeve of his dusty coat, as if it were a question in his mind
whether or not he was dreaming.

"My last day here!" said Mortimer gaily to himself. "Weary, tiresome old
books! my soul has grown sick over you for the last time."

He brushed the dust from off the dull-looking ledger, and went to work.
"Won't I astonish him?" he thought, looking up; and he laughed so
pleasantly that Tim, who was sweeping the rubbish into a dust-pan,
suspended operations, and expressed his surprise in a somewhat dubious
ejaculation:

"I vum!"

When Mr. Flint came in, he saw the same tall form bending over the
accustomed desk that had met his eyes every morning for the last ten years;
but he did not see the heart that was leaping with new life. And when, in
his usual snarly way, he gave Mortimer orders to make up certain invoices,
which would have employed the clerk till midnight, he opened a brief
conversation which ended in his utter amazement.

"Yo