led through it upon Crauford's ear.

"Promise me that there is not dishonour, nor crime, which is dishonour,
in this confidence, and I swear."

Crauford ground his teeth. He was about to reply impetuously, but he
checked himself. "I am not going," thought he, "to communicate my own
share of this plot, but merely to state that a plot does exist, and
then to point out in what manner he can profit by it; so far, therefore,
there is no guilt in his concealment, and, consequently, no excuse for
him to break his vow."

Rapidly running over this self-argument, he said aloud, "I promise!"

"And," rejoined Glendower, "I swear!"

At the close of this sentence another flash of lightning again made
darkness visible, and Glendower, beholding the countenance of his
companion, again recoiled: for its mingled haggardness and triumph
seemed to his excited imagination the very expression of a fiend!
"Now," said Crauford, relapsing into his usual careless tone, somewhat
enlivened by his sneer, "now, then, you must not interrupt me in my
disclosure by those starts and exclamations which break from your
philosophy like sparks from flint. Hear me throughout."

And, bending down, till his mouth reached Glendower's ear, he commenced
his recital. Artfully hiding his own agency, the master-spring of
the gigantic machinery of fraud, which, too mighty for a single hand,
required an assistant,--throwing into obscurity the sin, while, knowing
the undaunted courage and desperate fortunes of the man, he did not
affect to conceal the danger; expatiating upon the advantages, the
immense and almost inexhaustible resources of wealth which his scheme
suddenly opened upon one in the deepest abyss of poverty, and slightly
sketching, as if to excite vanity, the ingenuity and genius by which the
scheme originated, and could only be sustained,--Crauford's detail of
temptation, in its knowledge of human nature, in its adaptation of
act to principles, in its web-like craft of self-concealment, and the
speciousness of its lure, was indeed a splendid masterpiece of villanous
invention.

But while Glendower listened, and his silence flattered Crauford's
belief of victory, not for one single moment did a weak or yielding
desire creep around his heart. Subtly as the scheme was varnished, and
scarce a tithe of its comprehensive enormity unfolded, the strong and
acute mind of one long accustomed to unravel sophistry and gaze on the
loveliness of truth, saw at on