, you involuntarily shrank from the prematurely grave, nay,
austere expression which seemed habitual to them. He looked just what he
was, youthful in years, but old in trials and labours, and to one who
analysed his countenance, the conviction was inevitable that his will was
gigantic, his ambition unbounded, his intellect wonderfully acute and
powerful.

"Russell, do you know it is midnight?"

He frowned, and answered without looking up--

"Yes."

"How much longer will you sit up?"

"Till I finish my work."

The speaker stood on the threshold, leaning against the door facing, and,
after waiting a few moments, softly crossed the room and put her hand on
the back of his chair. She was two years his junior, and though evidently
the victim of recent and severe illness, even in her feebleness she was
singularly like him. Her presence seemed to annoy him, for he turned round
and said hastily: "Electra, go to bed. I told you good-night three hours
ago."

She stood still, but silent.

"What do you want?"

"Nothing."

He wrote on for some ten minutes longer, then closed the ledger and put it
aside. The candle had burned low; he took a fresh one from the drawer of
the table, and, after lighting it, drew a Latin dictionary near to him,
opened a worn copy of Horace, and began to study. Quiet as his own shadow
stood the fragile girl behind his chair, but as she watched him a heavy
sigh escaped her.

"If I thought I should be weak and sickly all my life I would rather die at
once, and burden you and auntie no longer."

"Electra, who told you that you burdened me?"

"Oh, Russell! don't I know how hard you have to work; and how difficult it
is for you to get even bread and clothes? Don't I see how auntie labours
day after day, and month after month? You are good and kind, but does that
prevent my feeling the truth, that you are working for me too? If I could
only help you in some way." She knelt down by his chair and leaned her head
on his knee, holding his hands between both hers.

"Electra, you do help me; all day long when I am at the store your face
haunts, strengthens me; I feel that I am striving to give you comforts, and
when at night you meet me at the gate, I am repaid for all I have done. You
must put this idea out of your head, little one; it is altogether a
mistake. Do you hear what I say? Get up, and go to sleep like a good child,
or you will have another wretched headache to-morrow, and can't bring me m