ss the fact as
well as another) which settles so often like a murky cloud upon the
minds of those who have been kept for weeks or months as confirmed
invalids, after lives of previous activity. She was right, too, as to
the suicide of low spirits. The red devils of Pandemonium may be
terrible, fresh from the flames of the pit; but they are nothing to
their brothers in blue, who people the air, overcloud the eyes and set
up torture-chambers in the brain. Bunyan, in that ever-living "Pilgrim's
Progress," paints no tyrant so terrible as "Giant Despair," and no
obstruction to the way so fatally impassable as the "Slough of Despond."
And we have never read over the sorrowful conclusion of the "Bride of
Lammermoor" without believing that the young master of Ravenswood, on
that sombre November morning, sunk the sooner and the more fatally in
the quicksands of the Kelpie's Flow, from the weight of the leaden heart
he carried in his bosom.

Suddenly, and before Richard Crawford had quite decided how to answer
her last remark, Josephine Harris said, as if the thought had only that
instant come to her:

"Oh, Dick, I am going to ask a favor, in return for my good opinion. The
carriage is in, I believe. May I ring for it, for an hour?"

"Certainly," said Crawford. Josephine rung the bell, and the order was
given.

"It is dusk, you see," said the young girl, apologetically, "and I
_must_ go down the Avenue before I go home. Many thanks. Be a good boy
and take care of yourself, till I see you again. John will set me down
at home when my little errand is over. Good night!" and her kiss fell
warm and soft upon his forehead--a sister's kiss, pure and
unimpassioned, even if there was no tie of blood between them.

Bell Crawford came down stairs and sat by her brother's side when she
heard the carriage roll away with her friend. And whither did that
carriage roll? Richard Crawford had no idea that Joe's "little errand"
could possibly have any connection with himself; and yet it had--a most
intimate and important connection, as will be perceived.

The coachman, at her request, drove out to Fifth Avenue, then down that
avenue to Tenth Street, where he opened the door and set her down,
receiving orders to wait there for her return. The young girl tripped up
from the corner, a few doors on the left hand side, past a church, and
entered the front-yard railing of one of two or three unpretending
three-story brick-houses standing together.