to the
other traps, I must get them if I can. At any rate, I will try."

Approaching the door of the library, he knocked, and was requested to
enter. Under pretence of receiving directions for his next day's
operations upon the plantation, he entered, and opened a conversation
with Jaspar. Walking carelessly up and down the room while his employer
issued his commands, he occasionally cast a furtive glance at the
secretary. Then, narrowing down his walk, he approached nearer and
nearer to it, until his swinging arm could touch it as he passed.
Finally he stopped, and leaned against the secretary, with his hands
behind him. He appeared very thoughtful and attentive, while Jaspar,
glad to find a theme he could converse upon, expatiated upon his
favorite methods of managing stock and crops. The overseer listened
patiently to all he said, occasionally interrupting with a word of
approbation. The enthusiastic planter, suspecting nothing of the
overseer, labored diligently in his argument, and did not notice that,
when the attentive listener carelessly put his hands into his pockets,
he conveyed with them the key of one of the drawers.

Dalhousie, having effected the object which brought him to the library,
soon grew tired of the planter's arguments, and edged towards the door,
through which he rather rudely made his exit.

Jaspar again relapsed into the moody melancholy from which the presence
of the overseer had roused him. Sinking back into his chair, he again
was a prey to the armed fears that continually goaded him. Occasionally
he roused from his stupor, and, driven by the startling apparition of
future retribution, paced the room in the most intense nervous
excitement. Frequent were the stops he made at the brandy-bottle on the
table; but, for a time, even the brandy-fiend refused to comfort
him,--refused to excite his brain, or pour a healing balm upon his
consuming misery. Again he sunk into his chair, overcome by the torture
of his emotions, and again the gnawing worm forced him to the bottle,
until, at last, nearly stupefied by the liquor, he slumbered uneasily in
his chair. But the terrible apparition, which seldom left him when
awake, was constant in his dreams; and, just as he was about to plunge
into the awful abyss that always yawned before him, he awoke, and
staggered to the bottle again. A gleam of consciousness now visited his
inebriated mind, and he bethought himself of retiring. With a dim sense
of his