nament,
the golden torque, which she had worn to the great party. Youth is
adventurous and very curious about necklaces, brooches, chains, and
other such adornments, so long as they are worn by young persons of
the female sex. Dick was seized with a great passion for examining this
curious chain, and, after some preliminary questions, was rash enough
to lean towards her and put out his hand toward the neck that lay in the
golden coil.

She threw her head back, her eyes narrowing and her forehead drawing
down so that Dick thought her head actually flattened itself. He started
involuntarily; for she looked so like the little girl who had struck him
with those sharp flashing teeth, that the whole scene came back, and he
felt the stroke again as if it had just been given, and the two white
scars began to sting as they did after the old Doctor had burned them
with that stick of gray caustic, which looked so like a slate pencil,
and felt so much like the end of a red-hot poker.

It took something more than a gallop to set him right after this. The
next day he mentioned having received a letter from a mercantile agent
with whom he had dealings. What his business was is, perhaps, none of
our business. At any rate, it required him to go at once to the city
where his correspondent resided.

Independently of this "business" which called him, there may have been
other motives, such as have been hinted at. People who have been living
for a long time in dreary country-places, without any emotion beyond
such as are occasioned by a trivial pleasure or annoyance, often get
crazy at last for a vital paroxysm of some kind or other. In this state
they rush to the great cities for a plunge into their turbid life-baths,
with a frantic thirst for every exciting pleasure, which makes them
the willing and easy victims of all those who sell the Devil's wares on
commission. The less intelligent and instructed class of unfortunates,
who venture with their ignorance and their instincts into what is
sometimes called the "life" of great cities, are put through a rapid
course of instruction which entitles them very commonly to a diploma
from the police court. But they only illustrate the working of the same
tendency in mankind at large which has been occasionally noticed in the
sons of ministers and other eminently worthy people, by many ascribed
to that intense congenital hatred for goodness which distinguishes human
nature from that of the brute,