anker's" eyes and eye-glasses looked calmly down upon a scene the whole
terrible import of which, could it have been presented to the world in
all its terrible hideousness, and in some form become eternally typical
of the curse it illustrated, would have stood for all time a savage
Cerberus frightening men from this kind of infamy and self-destruction.

In all my startling experience with criminals and the sad incidents
which have in the peculiar nature of my business forced themselves upon
my observation, there has been no one thing so reprehensible as the
trade of the blackmailer, and there is a no more terrible torture than
that inflicted by that class of criminals; and I am satisfied that could
heads of families realize their terrible danger when heedlessly forming
some unholy alliance, which is sure to eventually whip and scourge them
until life is a burden, there would be less of the moral laxity and
lechery than now burdens the world from palace and pulpit to
poverty-stricken hovel.

What more pitiable picture than that of a man just ready to pass from
all that should be worth having and loving to the unknown country, with
fear behind and awful uncertainty beyond--with the work of a whole life,
which should now bring a reward of tenderness, gratitude, and
reverential esteem, embittered and blasted by the relentless curse that
ever trails after weakness and passion--fear, distrust, and apprehension
between himself and family, and the Damoclean sword ever above him,
ready to fall at the instant he endeavors to throw the horrible shadow
from him to regain honesty and uprightness!

There the old man sat, a cowardly puppet before a brazen
adventuress--sat there a weak, drivelling, idiotic wreck before one so
vile that she was no longer capable of regret--sat there ruined in
everything worth the preservation of, suffering what he had for years
suffered--the regret, the remorse, the shame, and the abject fear that
were worse than a thousand deaths; while the utterly heartless woman,
with her hands folded across her waist in a masculine sort of a way,
looked at him smilingly, seemingly enjoying his efforts to recover the
breath lost in the, to him, severe labor of getting to her room; as it
appeared to be the custom for him to see her there rather than in the
parlor.

The interview was business-like, and, as it was not overwhelmed with
sentiment, was not protracted.

Mrs. Winslow asked Devereaux if he had brought th