not hurt him. Jackson heeded his bidding, but all was quiet.
Once he went in the next room, and climbed up to a high sliding window,
used for ventilation. Mr. Lawrence sat there poring over the books. At
twelve it was the same. Jackson tolled off the hour of midnight. Every
thing was safe in the great building. Then he settled himself in an
easy-chair, and presently fell into a doze.

Meanwhile Mr. Lawrence studied the books in a dazed, bewildered way.
Here and there a balance had been struck, and it all looked fair. But
there was a terrible wrong somewhere!

The figures danced before his eyes in lurid lights and grotesque shapes,
with grinning faces, flying, whirling, in a wild, demoniac waltz. The
room was full. The procession he had watched to-night winding out from
the mill, stopped and jeered, and pointed skinny fingers at him. Then
he was at the bank, and they came in troops, wringing their hands, and
cursing him. Strange tales that he had read mixed with them in
inextricable confusion. Pictures of the past hurried by with panoramic
distinctness; and hark! what was that? The grand trump of the Judgment
Day? It tolled and tolled again, like a thunder-peal. Was any one dead?

He was so tired! He put his arms down on the desk, and leaned his face
on them. If he could sleep off this intolerable weariness!

He was a boy again, wading through the limpid brook, stepping from stone
to stone, and sometimes plashing over. Was that the dried sweetness of
balsam,--the pungent odor of pennyroyal and water-mint,--the clean,
resinous fragrance of the pines? Out there were lily-pads,--great
golden-hearted chalices, with long, sinuous greenish-pink stems under
the shady, transparent water. How cool and peaceful! The sky overhead
was of palest blue with white flecks, and somewhere a bird was singing.
If he could go to it; if he could stay amid all this sweet quiet, and
forget-- What was it he wanted to forget? Not his little Fred, surely!
How proud he should be of him in his manhood. What a help and comfort!

There was a strange, sudden darkness. The head drooped a little one
side, and the visions had come to an end.

CHAPTER IX.

WHEN Farrell returned to his post in the morning, Jackson reported Mr.
Lawrence asleep in the office. No one thought of him again until about
ten o'clock, when some protested notes came in. Jeffries knocked at the
door, opened it softly, spoke, but received no answer; then stepped
nearer, a