aintest echo of such feelings
can enter into your imagination."

"There may be truth in that, and yet, like a fluttering moth round a
flame, it seems to me, that when I do see you, you take a terrific kind
of satisfaction in talking of the past."

"That is strictly true," said Varney; "the images with which my mind is
filled are frightful. Pent up do they remain for twelve long months. I
can speak to you, and you only, without disguise, and thus does it seem
to me that I get rid of the uneasy load of horrible imaginings. When you
are gone, and have been gone a sufficient lapse of time, my slumbers are
not haunted with frightful images--I regain a comparative peace, until
the time slowly comes around again, when we are doomed to meet."

"I understand you. You seem well lodged here?"

"I have ever kept my word, and sent to you, telling you where I am."

"You have, truly. I have no shadow of complaint to make against you. No
one, could have more faithfully performed his bond than you have. I give
you ample credit for all that, and long may you live still to perform
your conditions."

"I dare not deceive you, although to keep such faith I may be compelled
to deceive a hundred others."

"Of that I cannot judge. Fortune seems to smile upon you; you have not
as yet disappointed me."

"And will not now," said Varney. "The gigantic and frightful penalty of
disappointing you, stares me in the face. I dare not do so."

He took from his pocket, as he spoke, a clasped book, from which he
produced several bank notes, which he placed before the stranger.

"A thousand pounds," he said; "that is the agreement."

"It is to the very letter. I do not return to you a thousand thanks--we
understand each other better than to waste time with idle compliment.
Indeed I will go quite as far as to say, truthfully, that did not my
necessities require this amount from you, you should have the boon, for
which you pay that price at a much cheaper rate."

"Enough! enough!" said Varney. "It is strange, that your face should
have been the last I saw, when the world closed upon me, and the first
that met my eyes when I was again snatched back to life! Do you pursue
still your dreadful trade?"

"Yes," said the stranger, "for another year, and then, with such a
moderate competence as fortune has assigned me, I retire, to make way
for younger and abler spirits."

"And then," said Varney, "shall you still require of me such an amount
as this?