ited brain!

The hand upon the door was but an ordinary occurrence. It might now
be only a customer, who, seeing a light within, hoped to supply some
neglected want, or a friend passing by, who wished for a few words of
pleasant gossip. At any other time Claire would have stepped quickly
and with undisturbed expectation to receive the applicant for
admission. But guilty thoughts awakened their nervous attendants,
suspicion and fear, and these had sounded an instant alarm.

Still, very still, sat Edward Claire, even to the occasional
suppression of his breathing, which, to him, seemed strangely loud.

Several minutes elapsed, and then the young man commenced silently to
remove the various account-books to their nightly safe deposite in
the fire-proof. The cash-box, over the contents of which he lingered,
counting note by note and coin by coin, several times repeated, next
took its place with the books. The heavy iron door swung to, the key
traversed noiselessly the delicate and complicated wards, was removed
and deposited in a place of safety; and, yet unrecovered from his mood
of abstraction, the clerk left the store, and took his way homeward.
From that hour Edward Claire was to be the subject of a fierce
temptation. He had admitted an evil suggestion, and had warmed it in
the earth of his mind, even to germination. Already a delicate root
had penetrated the soil, and was extracting food therefrom. Oh! why
did he not instantly pluck it out, when the hand of an infant would
have sufficed in strength for the task? Why did he let it remain,
shielding it from the cold winds of rational truth and the hot sun of
good affections, until it could live, sustained by its own organs of
appropriation and nutrition? Why did he let it remain until its lusty
growth gave sad promise of an evil tree, in which birds of night find
shelter and build nests for their young?

Let us introduce another scene and another personage, who will claim,
to some extent, the reader's attention.

There were two small but neatly, though plainly, furnished rooms, in
the second story of a house located in a retired street. In one of
these rooms tea was prepared, and near the tea-table sat a young
woman, with a sleeping babe nestled to-her bosom. She was fair-faced
and sunny-haired; and in her blue eyes lay, in calm beauty, sweet
tokens of a pure and loving heart. How tenderly she looked down, now
and then, upon the slumbering cherub whose winning ways