t, I haven't a doubt."

Roused at length, Greenleaf stood up before the mocking fiend, so
radiant in her evil smiles, and said,--

"You enemy of all that is good, what brought you here? Keep in your own
sphere, if there is one for you in this world."

"I came to see my sister, as you know. It was a most unexpected pleasure
to meet you. I came to tell her that brother Henry has either run away
or killed himself, it doesn't matter which."

"Pray, follow him. I assure you we shall mourn your absence as bitterly
as you do his."

"Well, good-bye," she said, still laughing in the same terrible tone.
"Better luck next time."

The door closed upon her, and Greenleaf drew a long breath--with a sense
of infinite relief.

"Come," said Easelmann, entering a moment later,--"come, let us go. We
have done quite enough for one day. You wouldn't take my advice, and a
pretty mess you have made of it."

CHAPTER XXXII.

When the remains of John Fletcher were borne to the grave, the memory
of his faults was buried with him. "Poor fellow!" was the general
ejaculation in State Street,--at once his _requiescat_ and epitaph. But
the great wheels of business moved on; Bulls and Bears kept up their
ever-renewing conflicts and their secret machinations; new gladiators
stepped into the ring; new crowds waited the turn of the wheel of
Fortune; and new Fletchers were ready to sacrifice themselves, if need
were, for the Bullions of the exchange. Who believes in the efficacy of
"lessons"? What public execution ever deterred the murderer from his
design? What spectacle of drunkenness ever restrained the youthful
debauchee? What accession, however notable, to the ranks of "the
unfortunate" ever made the fascinated woman pause in her first steps
toward ruin?

No,--human nature remains the same; and the erring ones, predestined to
sin by their own unrestrained passions, wait only for the overmastering
circumstances to yield and fall. When any of these solemn warnings are
held up to the yet callow sinner, what does he propose to do? To stop
and repent? No,--to be a little more careful and not be caught.

Not that precepts and examples are useless. All together go to make up
the moral government of the world,--pervading like the atmosphere, and
like it resting with uniform pressure upon the earth. Crime and folly
will always have their exemplars, but retribution furnishes the
restraining influence that keeps evil down to its average. As loc