here, take your virtue
off, you appall me."

She poured the caudle into small silver tumblers, and gave them to us.
"The Bequest of a Friend" was engraved on them. Her fingers were like
ice, and her head shook with fatigue; but her voice was sprightly and
her smile bright. Ann ate a good deal of sponge cake, and omitted the
caudle, but I drank mine to the memory of the donor of the cup.

"You know that sherry, Ben," and Mrs. Hepburn nodded him toward a
decanter. He put his hand on it, and took it away. "None to-night,"
he said. Mari came with our shawls, and we hastened away, hearing her
shoot the bolt of the door behind us. Ben drew my arm in his, and the
girls walked rapidly before us. It was a white, hazy night, and the
moon was wallowing in clouds.

"Let us walk off the flavor of Hep's cards," said Adelaide, "and go to
Wolf's Point."

"Do you wish to go?" he asked me.

"Yes."

Ann skipped. A nocturnal excursion suited her exactly.

"You are not to have the toothache to-morrow, or pretend to be lame,"
said Adelaide.

"Not another hiss, Adder. _En avant!_"

We passed down Norfolk Street, now dark and silent, and reached our
house. A light was burning in a room in the third story, and a
window was open. Desmond sat by it, his arms folded across his chest,
smoking, and contemplating some object beyond our view. Ann derisively
apostrophized him, under her breath, while Ben unlocked the court gate
and went in after Rash, who came out quietly, and we proceeded. In
looking behind me, I stumbled.

"What's the matter?" he asked. "Are you afraid?"

"Yes."

"Of what?"

"The Prince of Darkness."

"The devil lives a little behind us."

"In you, too, then?"

"In Rash. Look at him; he is bigger than Faust's dog, jumps higher,
and is blacker. You can't hear the least sound from him as he gambols
with his familiar."

We left the last regular street on that side of the city, and entered
a road, bordered by trees and bushes, which hid the country from us.
We crept through a gap in it, crossed two or three spongy fields,
and ascended a hill, reaching an abrupt edge of the rocks, over whose
earthy crest we walked. Below it I saw a strip of the sea, hemmed in
on all sides, for the light was too vague for me to see its narrow
outlet. It looked milky, misty, and uncertain; the predominant shores
stifled its voice, if it ever had one. Adelaide and Ann crouched
over the edge of the rock, reciting, in a chanting tone,