poor old eyes were wide apart again, now, and
the wind tugged at his scanty hair, and the snow, no whiter than itself,
sifted through it and drifted into the folds of his clothes. But,
stunned, and tortured, and despairing though he was, the old clerk
staggered on insensibly homeward. Back through the dreary trees; back
through the drifted streets; back to the bridge, where he stopped by
some fatal impulse and leaned near a bleak abutment that overlooked the
river--gazing, gazing, gazing in a blank stare at the driving channel
below. The thought, the lurking purpose was shadowed dimly on his
distraught mind. The cold, rolling river once passed, the seething cakes
of ice once passed, and it would soon be over, soon be over. Life had
been a worthless gift to him. His youth had been falsely colored by the
visions of childhood; his age had been falsely colored by the ambitions
of youth. Nothing he had looked to in the distance ever had grown into
reality. Why should he survive his good name! And he clutched the stones
and raised himself up and quivered at the top of the stone wall.

But now his hand relaxed, and his face, clouded and suffering before,
fell into a calmer look of attention, almost a smile broke over it, and
he gazed out against the sky as if transfixed.

It was the vision that had, like the pillar of cloud by day and of fire
by night, preceded and gladdened him on his way; the scene of his happy,
unsuspecting girls; of the pale Little Scout--whose simple touch would
then have instantly revived and soothed him, whose tender love was his
comfort, his sanctuary from pursuing evils; the scene of his old home,
far cosier, far more beloved, far more cheerful for all its homeliness,
for all its poverty, than the more pretentious one of Emanuel Griffin;
the scene of lowly pleasures it had cherished; of the bitter trials it
had assuaged; and, finally, of the bright, laughing group he had left
there, oh! so little prepared, so little conscious of the blight he
would bring among them. This vision, these thoughts had flowed in upon
his already disturbed mind, and had driven quite away all consciousness
of where he was or how long he had stood in the bitter cold, when a
policeman--overcoated, and furred, and frozen-bearded,--came by, and,
suspecting things to be not altogether right, caught David by the
sleeve, and adjusted his scarf and hat, saying,--

"No loafing on the bridge, old man. Move on; move on, now!" at whic