e of casual
acquaintances. Nor was it any gay convivialist of happier days whose
face now greeted him: it was the old money-lender, who in a voice husky
with loss of breath, or possibly emotion, said, thrusting couple of
twenty-pound bank-notes into West' hand--

"Here! take these notes. Take them, I say!" he repeated, as the young
man, dizzy with amazement, stammered out--

"You accept, then, my terms?"

"No!" growled the usurer, "I _give_ them to you. Do you understand me? I
say I _give_ them to you. I am an old man; I never gave away a shilling
before in my life! Repay me if you will, when and how it please you. I
have no security--I ask no acknowledgment; I want none. I do not count
upon it. _It is gone!_" and the usurer pronounced the last words with an
effort which was heroic, from the evident self-mastery it cost him.
"There! go--go!" he resumed, "and take an old man's advice--Make money
at all hazards, and never lend except on good security. Remember that!"
The old man gently pushed West away, and all hatless and slippered as he
was, ran back muttering to his den, leaving the object of his mysterious
generosity fixed like a statue of amazement in the centre of the
pavement.

About three months had elapsed, when Bernard West once more knocked at
the door of the money-lender.

"Is Mr. Brace at home?" he inquired, cheerfully.

"Oh! if you please, sir, they buried him yesterday," replied the
servant, with a look of curiously-affected solemnity.

"Buried him!" cried the visitor, with sincere disappointment and grief
in his tone.

"Yes, sir; perhaps you would like to see Miss Brace, if it's any thing
very particular?"

"I should, indeed," said West; "and when she knows the cause of my
visit, I think she will excuse the intrusion."

The servant gave an odd look, whose significance West was unable to
divine, as she led the way to her young mistress's drawing-room.

West entered timidly, for he doubted the delicacy of such a proceeding,
though his heart was almost bursting with desire of expansion under the
shock just received. A beautiful and proud-looking girl of nineteen or
twenty years rose to meet him. Her large blue eyes, which bore traces of
many and recent tears, worked strangely upon his feelings, already
sufficiently excited.

"I came," he said, in his deep musical voice, "to repay a noble service.
Will you permit me to share a grief for the loss of one to whom I owe my
life--yes, more than my l