meeting the "red woman," and for that reason he wished to seem the man
with no nerves whatever.

"It is my turn--I will go in," said Bell Crawford, rising from her chair
and following the negro attendant within the curtain, which only parted
a little to admit her and then swept down again to the floor, giving no
glimpse to the two outsiders of what might be within.

The sky had now grown perceptibly darker, though it was still some hours
to night; and at the moment when Bell Crawford entered the inner room of
the sorceress the gathering thunder-storm burst in fury. The thunder was
not as yet peculiarly heavy, and the flashes of lightning had often been
surpassed in vividness; but the rain poured down in torrents and the
gust of wind, which swept through the streets set windows rattling and
doors and shutters banging at a rate which promised work for the
carpenters. The two windows of the room looked out upon the street,
though through closed blinds; and whether intentionally or
inadvertently, the two in waiting drew two chairs to one of the windows,
very near together, and sat there, watching the dashing rain and
listening to the storm. Had there been any possibility of hearing the
words spoken in the adjoining room, that possibility would now have been
entirely destroyed by the noise of the storm; and whatever of curiosity
either may have felt for the result of Bell's adventure, was rendered
inefficient for the time. Meanwhile, something else was working of quite
as much consequence.

Chances and accidents are very curious things; and those who have no
belief in a Supreme Being who brings about great results by apparently
insignificant agencies, must have a very difficult time of it, in
reconciling the incongruous and the inadequate. Holmes, the merriest and
wisest of social philosophers (when he does not run mad on the
human-snake theory, as he has done in "Elsie Venner") very prettily
illustrates the opposite, as to how the agency which moves the great
may also perform the little, in

"The force that wheels the planets round delights in spinning tops,
And that young earthquake t'other day was great on shaking props;"

but the opposite may be illustrated more easily, and is certainly
illustrated much oftener. Not only may

"A broken girth decide a nation's fate,"

in battle; but a gnawing insignificant rat may sink a ship, and one
contemptible traitor be able to disseminate poison enough to destroy a