an object of astonishment to you! Not to you, sir! Not to
you!" He paused, trembling, his anger and his shame rising together.

Narcisse stood for a moment, silent, undaunted, the picture of amazed
friendship and injured dignity, then raised his hat with the solemnity
of affronted patience and said:--

"Mistoo Itchlin, seein' as 'tis you, a puffic gen'leman, 'oo is not
goin' to 'efuse that satisfagtion w'at a gen'leman, always a-'eady to
give a gen'leman,--I bid you--faw the pwesen'--good-evenin', seh!" He
walked away.

Richling stood in his tracks dumfounded, crushed. His eyes followed the
receding form of the borrower until it disappeared around a distant
corner, while the eye of his mind looked in upon himself and beheld,
with a shame that overwhelmed anger, the folly and the puerility of his
outburst. The nervous strain of twenty-four hours' fast, without which
he might not have slipped at all, only sharpened his self-condemnation.
He turned and walked to his house, and all the misery that had oppressed
him before he had seen the prison, and all that had come with that
sight, and all this new shame, sank down upon his heart at once. "I am
not a man! I am not a whole man!" he suddenly moaned to himself.
"Something is wanting--oh! what is it?"--he lifted his eyes to the
sky,--"what is it?"--when in truth, there was little wanting just then
besides food.

He passed in at the narrow gate and up the slippery alley. Nearly at its
end was the one window of the room he called home. Just under it--it was
somewhat above his head--he stopped and listened. A step within was
moving busily here and there, now fainter and now plainer; and a voice,
the sweetest on earth to him, was singing to itself in its soft,
habitual way.

He started round to the door with a firmer tread. It stood open. He
halted on the threshold. There was a small table in the middle of the
room, and there was food on it. A petty reward of his wife's labor had
brought it there.

"Mary," he said, holding her off a little, "don't kiss me yet."

She looked at him with consternation. He sat down, drew her upon his
lap, and told her, in plain, quiet voice, the whole matter.

"Don't look so, Mary."

"How?" she asked, in a husky voice and with flashing eye.

"Don't breathe so short and set your lips. I never saw you look so,
Mary, darling!"

She tried to smile, but her eyes filled.

"If you had been with me," said John, musingly, "it wouldn't have
ha