ter and mistress both, without disloyalty
to the one or injury to the other, he hesitated and argued with himself,
till his fears for the latter drove him to Mr. Ramsdell's house.

The night was a stormy one. The heaviest snow of the season was falling
with a high gale blowing down the Sound. As he approached the house,
which, as we know, is one of the modern ones in the Riverside district,
he felt his heart fail him. But as he came nearer and got the full
effect of glancing lights, seductive music, and the cheery bustle of
crowding carriages, he saw in his mind's eye such a picture of his
beautiful mistress, threatened, unknown to herself, in a quarter she
little realized, that he lost all sense of what had hitherto deterred
him. Making then and there his great choice, he looked about for the
entrance, with the full intention of seeing and warning her.

But this, he presently perceived, was totally impracticable. He could
neither go to her nor expect her to come to him; meanwhile, time was
passing, and if his master was there--The thought made his head dizzy,
and, situated as he was, among the carriages, he might have been run
over in his confusion if his eyes had not suddenly fallen on a lighted
window, the shade of which had been inadvertently left up.

Within this window, which was only a few feet above his head, stood the
glowing image of a woman clad in pink and sparkling with jewels. Her
face was turned from him, but he recognized her splendor as that of the
one woman who could never be too gorgeous for his taste; and, alive to
this unexpected opportunity, he made for this window with the intention
of shouting up to her and so attracting her attention.

But this proved futile, and, driven at last to the end of his resources,
he tore out a slip of paper from his note-book and, in the dark and with
the blinding snow in his eyes, wrote the few broken sentences which he
thought would best warn her, without compromising his master. The means
he took to reach her with this note I have already related. As soon as
he saw it in her hands he fled the place and took the first train west.
He was in a pitiable condition, when, three days later, he reached
the small station from which he had originally set out. The haste, the
exposure, the horror of the crime he had failed to avert, had undermined
his hitherto excellent constitution, and the symptoms of a serious
illness were beginning to make themselves manifest. But he, li