r, bursting through the group
of leeches; "he is a deadly enemy!"

The physicians looked at each other, smiled darkly, and shook their
heads.

"Poor Grey!" said an old doctor.

"Mad?" asked the youngest of the group.

"The cell, the chain, and scourge would be a wholesome prescription,"
said the first speaker.

Such were the tender mercies of science to madness in the eighteenth
century.

* * * * *

It was a hushed midsummer night. The hum of busy footsteps had long
since died away, and the twinkling lights had faded, one by one, from
the huge bulk of the metropolis. To the lonely night watcher, there
was enough of light in the mild effulgence of the moon to distinguish
whether the pale invalid woke or slumbered; whether the repose of the
dead was inviolate, or invaded by noisome things that move abroad only
in darkness. And midway between life and death, so motionless that you
would say she belonged to the dark realm of the latter, so lovely that
the former still seemed to claim her own, lay the earth-born love of
the painter, with her ethereal essence yet hovering near the beloved
of her soul. The painter sat by the bedside, with her thin, pale hand
clasped in his. He had listened to her last accents; he had heard her
call him, in the fervor of her affection, "her beautiful, her own;"
and he knew that, ere the unseen clock had recorded the death of
another hour, the feeble pulse that fluttered beneath his fingers
would have ceased to beat. Yet, with all this, his eyes were tearless,
and his heart less heavy than in those dark dreams which had
foreshadowed this event. In weal or woe, his prophetic dreams seemed
even more impressive than the realities which followed them.

It appeared as if there were a magnetic influence in the touch of the
dying hand; that the soul of Esther, bathed in the dawning light of
the better world, had communicated a portion of its brightness to his
own. So the hours wore on; the feeble pulse yet beat, but fainter and
fainter. At last, through the open window which commanded a view of
the east, the brightening streaks of dawn appeared; in the leaves of a
solitary tree, that stood amid a wilderness of brick hard by, was
heard the faint, tremulous twitter of a bird waiting but a ruddier ray
to launch forth upon his dewy pinions. A smile, like a ray of light,
dawned upon the countenance of Esther. She pointed to a shadowy alcove
in the chamber, and the p