ment, where crimson curtains muffled the glare of sunshine
and created a rich obscurity, the three guests drew near the
silver-haired old man. Memory, with a finger between the leaves of her
huge volume, placed herself at his right hand; Conscience, with her
face still hidden in the dusky mantle, took her station on the left,
so as to be next his heart; while Fancy set down her picture-box upon
the table with the magnifying-glass convenient to his eye.

We can sketch merely the outlines of two or three out of the many
pictures which at the pulling of a string successively peopled the box
with the semblances of living scenes. One was a moonlight picture, in
the background a lowly dwelling, and in front, partly shadowed by a
tree, yet besprinkled with flakes of radiance, two youthful figures,
male and female. The young man stood with folded arms, a haughty smile
upon his lip and a gleam of triumph in his eye as he glanced downward
at the kneeling girl. She was almost prostrate at his feet, evidently
sinking under a weight of shame and anguish which hardly allowed her
to lift her clasped hands in supplication. Her eyes she could not
lift. But neither her agony, nor the lovely features on which it was
depicted, nor the slender grace of the form which it convulsed,
appeared to soften the obduracy of the young man. He was the
personification of triumphant scorn.

Now, strange to say, as old Mr. Smith peeped through the
magnifying-glass, which made the objects start out from the canvas
with magical deception, he began to recognize the farmhouse, the tree
and both the figures of the picture. The young man in times long past
had often met his gaze within the looking-glass; the girl was the very
image of his first love--his cottage-love, his Martha Burroughs. Mr.
Smith was scandalized. "Oh, vile and slanderous picture!" he exclaims.
"When have I triumphed over ruined innocence? Was not Martha wedded in
her teens to David Tomkins, who won her girlish love and long enjoyed
her affection as a wife? And ever since his death she has lived a
reputable widow!"

Meantime, Memory was turning over the leaves of her volume, rustling
them to and fro with uncertain fingers, until among the earlier pages
she found one which had reference to this picture. She reads it close
to the old gentleman's ear: it is a record merely of sinful thought
which never was embodied in an act, but, while Memory is reading,
Conscience unveils her face and stri