emed
no more to do. With weak unsteady steps he paced his room, and looked
at the old Swiss chamois-gun above the door. He took it down and
handled it. It was a coarse clumsy weapon, and he could not trust it to
effect his purpose. Shunning observation, he walked by back streets and
passages until he came to a gunsmith's shop, where he bought a large
pistol, under pretence of wanting it for the purposes of travel.

He carried it home himself, but instead of returning straight to his
rooms, he was tempted to stroll for a last time about the grounds. The
delightful softness of the darkening air on that spring evening, and the
cheerful gleam of lamps leaping up here and there between the trees, and
flickering on the quiet river, enticed him up the glorious old entwined
avenue into the shadow of the great oaks beyond, until he found himself
leaning between the weeping willows over the bridge of Merham Hall,
looking on the still grey poetic towers, and the three motionless
reposing swans, and the gloaming of the west. And so, still thinking,
thinking, thinking, he slowly wandered home.

As he had determined to commit suicide that night, it mattered little to
him at what hour it was done, and opening the first book on the table,
he tried to kill time until it grew later and darker. The book happened
to be a Bible, and conscious how much it jarred with his present frame
of mind, and his guilty purpose, he threw it down again; _but not until
his eye had caught the words_:--

"AND HE SAW THE ANGEL OF THE LORD STANDING IN THE WAY."

The verse haunted him against his will, till he half shuddered at the
dim light which the moon made, as it struggled through the curtains only
partially drawn, into the quaint old room. He would delay no longer,
and loaded the pistol with a dreadful charge, which should not fail of
carrying death.

Some fancy seized him to put out the lights, and then with a violent
throbbing at the heart, and a wild prayer for God's mercy at that
terrible hour, he took the pistol in his hand.

At that very instant,--when there was hardly the motion of a hair's
breadth between him and fate,--what was it that startled his attention,
and caused his hand to drop, and fixed him there with open mouth and
wild gaze, and caused him to shiver like the leaves of the acacia in a
summer wind?

Right before him,--half hidden by the window curtains, and half drawing
them back,--clear and distinct he saw the spirit