At first, excitement and terror winged my feet; but even these refused, after I had gone a few squares, to do their friendly office.

Bareheaded, but for a filmy veil, soon thoroughly drenched through; barehanded and almost barefooted, for my thin silk slippers and stockings formed not, after my first few steps, the slightest impediment to wet or cold, I felt that I must perish by the wayside. The sleety storm drove sharply in my face, rendered doubly sensitive to its rigor by long absence from outward air. My insufficient clothing clung closely about me, freezing in every fold, and I glided rather than walked along the icy pavement, scarcely lifting my stiffened feet, or having power to do so.

One stern hope it almost seemed a forlorn one now possessed me to the exclusion of all else; one prayer trembled on my quivering lips that I might reach my destination, if only to tell my story and drop dead a moment after.

Yet I think, in spite of this resolve this prayer that, had a friendly door been opened on the way, an area even emitting light and warmth, I should have instinctively turned aside and, at any risk, pleaded for shelter, both from storm and foeman.

In those days that seem far back in the march of luxury, because of the vast impetus of human momentum, stores were closed early, and the primitive family tea-table still existed which marked the assemblage of the household around the evening comet and hearth.

I remember the closed, inhospitable look of the houses past which I sped the solid wooden shutters, then universal, which, closed from the wayfarer every evidence of internal life, and the cold sheen of the icy-white marble steps, made visible by dim lamp-light.

I gained a street-corner not very far, as it seemed to me, from my place of destination. Yet, until I glanced across the way, I was uncertain, and, but for the friendly refuge this opportunity presented, I think I must have faltered and perhaps fallen and frozen to death on the road-side.

To my bewildered and disordered brain, Aladdin’s palace seemed suddenly to rise before me in that wilderness of sealed houses and uninhabited streets; for, as I have said before, the very dogs had crept away that night into secure corners, and not even a pariah chimney-sweep, with his dingy blanket drawn close around him, nodded and dozed by a watch-box or slept on a door-step.

I crept across the space that divided me from this cynosure of warmth and luxury, as a poor, draggled moth might do, to bask in the revivifying light of an astral lamp, attracted beyond my power to resist, to pause before the resplendent window, rich in green and purple and amber rotund vases, whose transparent contents were set forth and revealed by fiery jets of gas, toward which I feebly stretched my half-frozen fingers.

There was a splendid vision, also, of goldfish, in glass globes, jars of leaden rock-work, baskets of waxen fruits and flowers, crystal bottles containing rose and amber essences; but, above all, there was light there was heat.

With one greedy, insatiate gaze my eyes swept in the details of this mimic Eden, and, in another moment, my hand turned the knob of the ground-glass door near the window, and I found myself in paradise!

Rest, shelter, heat these must I have or perish, and, but for the timely refuge of this thrice-blessed apothecary’s shop, I might have left this retrospect unwritten!

I staggered to a chair, and seated myself, unbidden, by the almost red-hot stove, and cowered above it for a time, oblivious of all else.

Then I looked timidly around me.

The master of this Eden was standing, at the moment when he first caught my eyes, holding up a bottle, scrutinizingly, between his face and the light, one of many of the same sort that a lad, in a long, white apron, was engaged in washing.

The odor of the various drugs and essences over which he presided formed an aromatic atmosphere singularly suggestive of incense, as did his costume, that of a high-priest of the temple; but, very soon discarding a gray-linen cape or talma, worn for the protection of his speckless coat, and tossing a bundle of corks rather disdainfully to his assistant, the head of the establishment came politely forward, standing on the other side of the stove, with clasped hands, expectantly.

“You will tell me your errand here when you are quite ready,” he said, kindly. “Do rest and warm yourself first. The stove has a narcotic tendency when one has just come out of cold like this! The thermometer has fallen twenty degrees since noonday; but that is only half the trouble. Hem! This sleet and wind are beyond any former experience of mine at this season.”

I heard the words of the speaker as if bound in a dreadful dream, but they were clearly understood, and now I made an effort at utterance, but failed, until after repeated endeavors, to enunciate one word. Yet I noted distinctly, and even with a nice discrimination of scrutiny, the red-haired and bright-eyed man, portly and somewhat pompous-looking, with his plump hands folded over his vest, who stood before me, looking pityingly down on my suffering face.

After a time I gathered up my forces sufficiently to inquire, being quite thawed and comforted by the reviving heat of the apartment, how far it might be to the house of Dr. Pemberton, who resided in the block of houses known as Kendrick’s Row, on Maple Street.

“It is nearly a square and a half, miss, by street measurement just now, as, on account of changes, this is impassable,” was the prompt reply. “Scarcely half a square by the alley that runs from my back-door, after a short turn, straight through to Maple Street; and, if it is only question of a message, I can send Caleb, so that you may await the coming of the doctor in comfort, in this emporium. He always uses his gig for night-visits, and will, no doubt, be happy to carry you home in his wolfskin.”

“Thanks there is no question of a medical visit. I have very important business with him. I must see him in his own house. I will go without further delay. But, perhaps” lingering a moment “you would be so good as to suffer Mr. Caleb to show me the short way you spoke of? I shall not mind going through the alley at all.”

I rose prepared to depart, and glanced beseechingly at Caleb, who laid down his bottle uncorked, and folded his arms with an approving knightly bow, unperceived by his employer.

“We have just had a similar inquiry as to Dr. Pemberton’s locality; I mean,” said the master of the emporium, without replying to my request, “on the part of a very distinguished-looking personage I might say, well got up in the fur and overcoat line and, had you come in a few moments earlier, you might have had his escort; or perhaps you are on his track now probably one of his party?” hesitatingly. “No! Well, it is a strange coincidence, to say the least very strange as the doctor is so well known hereabouts. As to going out in the storm again, I have my misgivings, miss, for you, when I look at the flimsiness of your attire and its drenched condition. I can’t see, indeed, how a delicate-looking lady like yourself ever held her own against this terrific wind. Eolus seems to have lost his bags! But, perhaps you had an escort to the corner?”

“No no no I came quite alone! Oh, for pity’s sake, put me on my way and let me go! My business is most urgent!” I hesitated my heart sank. Had Bainrothe been before me to spirit the doctor away by some feigned message of need, of distress, to which no inclemency of weather could close that benevolent medical ear? And did he lie in wait for me on the way?”

“Perhaps I had, after all, better go alone,” I continued; “it might be too great an inconvenience” and I moved toward the ground-glass door.

“Not if you will accept my services, miss,” said Caleb, timidly, pushing away the remaining corks as he spoke, and glancing furtively at his master.

“How often must I remind you, Caleb Fink,” said the owner of the emporium, “that your sphere is circumscribed to your duties? Attend to those phials, and drain them well before you bottle the citrate of magnesia. The last was spoiled by your unpardonable carelessness. I have not forgotten this!”

And again, with a deprecatory look at me, Caleb Fink subsided into a nonentity.

“Truly has the great and wise Dr. Perkins remarked that ’the women of America are suicidal from the cradle to the grave!’ I will give you one of his pamphlets, miss, to take away with you, and you will be convinced that slippers are serpents in disguise in winter weather! The wooden shoes of Germany rather! Ay, or even the sabot of France! You must not stir another step in those. Be seated, pray, and I will not detain you long, while I procure a substitute or protection for such shams, worth nothing in such Siberian weather. Caleb, a word with you;”. and he whispered to his apprentice, who glided away, to return in a trice with a pair of India-rubber overshoes, into which benign boats he proceeded to thrust my unresisting feet, as I stood leaning on the counter; after which a muffler was tied about my ears, and a heavy honey-comb shawl thrown over my shoulders by the same expeditious hands.

“Could you be always as spry, Caleb! Your gloves now I shall need my own” and a pair of stalwart knitted mits were forthwith drawn over my passive hands, in which my fingers nestled undivided and warm.

“Now you look something like going for the doctor! My overcoat, Caleb gloves fur-cape cane! All hanging near the bed. There, we are ready now for old Borealis himself, if he chooses to blow! But I forget God bless me, you are as pale as the ghost of Pompey, at Philippi! Caleb, the Perkins elixir a glass! Now, young lady, just take it down at a gulp. It is the only alcoholic preparation that Napoleon Bonaparte Burress ever suffered to pass his temperate lips. Father Matthew does not object to it at all, I am told, on emergencies. It may be had at this repository very low, either by the gross or dozen” speaking the last words mechanically, and he tendered me a small glass of some nauseous, bittersweet, and potent beverage, that coursed through my veins like liquid fire.

“Thank you; it is very comforting,” I gasped, and, setting the glass down on the counter, I covered my face with my hands and burst into tears.

The whole forlornness of my outcast and eleemosynary condition rushed over me simultaneously with the flood of warmth caused by the Perkins elixir, which nerved me the next moment for the encounter with the elements.

I saw the kindly master of the emporium turn away, either to conceal his own emotion or his observation of mine, and Caleb stood trembling and crying like a girl before me.

I had shrunk, it may be remembered, from the description Sabra gave me of McDermot, when I heard of his red hair and “chaney-blue eyes;” but to this red-haired, hazel-eyed man I yearned instinctively, for there are moral differences discernible in the temperament greater than any other, and, when a red-haired man is tender-hearted, he usually usurps the womanly prerogative, and gushes.

But Caleb’s sympathy touched me even more.

“We will go now, if you please,” I said, recovering myself by a strong effort, and Napoleon B. Burress mutely tendered me his stout, overcoated arm. “The short way you mentioned let us go that way, if not disagreeable to you,” I pleaded.

“Oh, no; it will be an absolute saving of time to me; but, I warn you, the alley is narrow and dark!”

“Never mind; I prefer the short cut, be it what it may. Time is every thing to me.”

We passed through the shop, threaded a narrow entry, opened a back-door, which gave upon a strip of paved yard, leading in turn to a back-gate, through which we emerged into a dark and dirty-looking alley.

But first the work of unlocking a padlock, which confined a chain, had to be effected, and, while Mr. N.B. Burress was thus unfastening his back-gate preparatory to egress, I stood gazing back, Eurydice-like, in the place I had left, for the doors of the long entry stood open, revealing the shop beyond and its illuminated window.

Standing thus, I saw, as through a vista and in a perfect ecstasy of terror, the ground-glass shop-door open, and two well-known forms in succession block its portals those of Gregory and Bainrothe! Would Caleb send them on our track, or would the better part of valor come to his aid and save me from their clutches?

A thought occurred to me. “Mr. Burress,” I said (I had retained his name with its remarkable prefix), “will you not lock the gate outside? I can wait patiently until you secure your premises and and bring away the key.”

“I had meant to leave it here until my return, but you are right,” speaking indulgently. “I suppose burglars are abroad on nights like this,” and he quietly relocked the alley-gate. “You are very considerate,” he said, dryly, after we had gone a few yards in profound silence, “but had I not better return for a lantern?”

“Oh, not for worlds! Faster faster, Mr. Burress, and Heaven will reward you! Never mind the stones the snow the mud so that we get there first! Yes, I see where the lane turns; I see very well in the dark never fear only do not delay I am so glad you locked the alley-gate. They cannot come that way.”

“Of whom are you afraid, poor young lady? Nobody would harm you, I am sure; such a gentle, tender thing as you seem to be!”

“Oh, yes! Fiends are on my track! Don’t let them get possession of me again, Mr. Burress. I am pursued yes faster faster!”

“But what has startled you, poor thing, since we left the Repository? You seemed quite calm after the Perkins elixir and those tears. Ah! I understand!” and he coughed several times significantly. The doctor will set all right, I suppose, when I give you into his hands. I am glad I came with you myself courage, we shall soon be there!”

“Yes yes he is my only hope! I will explain all when we are safe with him. It is not as you think! I have no strength now. Don’t question me further, it exhausts me to talk. Just drag me along.”

And silently and valiantly did he betake himself to his task. The noisome alley was threaded, and again we emerged into the sleety, lamp-lit street, a few doors from the corner of that block, in the centre of which Dr. Pemberton resided.

As we approached the friendly threshold, the exact situation of which was familiar to my companion, he pointed it out triumphantly with his stick.

“We shall soon be there,” he reiterated, “no need for hurry now.” But as he spoke I saw a carriage turn the corner we were facing, and again I urged on my lagging escort to his utmost speed. I ran up the sleety steps in advance of him, and rang the bell with convulsive energy. Its summons was answered promptly, but not a second too soon, for, as the door opened to admit me, the carriage paused before the door, and two men leaped from it, one of whom, the taller, thrusting Burress aside, rushed up the steps after me with outstretched arms.

I had found refuge in the vestibule, and slammed the door in his face closing, as it did, with a spring-lock before he reached the platform. Then turning to his companion, he fled down to the street again, with the cry that reached my ear distinctly, of “Baffled, by God!” on his profane lips, and the twain drove off as rapidly as they had come.

A moment later a feeble ring at the door, and a voice from without, assuring the inmates that it was only N.B. Burress, and conjuring them not to be alarmed, caused him to be admitted at once by the house-maid, and shown into the same small front study into which she had conducted me to await the doctor’s appearance.

“What name shall I give? The doctor is engaged,” said the house-maid, lingering.

“None at all, merely let me know when he is ready to see me. I am tired and cold, and can wait patiently by this good fire.”

“It may be some time, miss; would you like a cup of hot coffee, you and this gentleman? The doctor has just had his supper, and there is a pint or more left in the urn.”

“Thanks nothing could be more welcome,” and the house-maid disappeared.

“That is the way of this house patients are always entertained, if in need of refreshment,” said Mr. Burress, advancing to the chimney, while he rubbed his hands in a self-gratulatory manner, then expanded them before the bright glare that filled every pore with warmth.

I was tremulous, and silent, and half exhausted, and he seemed to take this in at a friendly glance, for he made none of those inquiries that I knew were burning on his inquisitive lips; but after a few moments of further enjoyment before the grate, and having duly turned himself as on a spit, so as to absorb every ray of heat possible, he betook himself to an arm-chair and a book, near the drop-light on a corner table, the soft rustling of the turning leaves of which had a most soothing effect on my nerves.

“I shall only stay a few minutes,” he said, apologetically. “I wish, however, to see you safe in Dr. Pemberton’s hands before I leave you, as a sort of duty, you know, you being a charge of mine, and should you need further escort ”

“Oh, thank you, kindly; you have surely had enough trouble on my account already.”

“Not a particle only a pleasure, miss; but the push I got from your pursuer upset me on the pavement and made sparks fly out of my eyes, and, before I could gather myself up, they were back again in the carriage and off. You will have to give me the mans name, miss you will, indeed, on my own account, when all your fatigue and fright are over. Such favors are generally returned by me with compound interest.”

“Oh, be thankful you have not a compound fracture, Mr. Burress, and let the fellow go. He is beneath contempt. But I shall not be satisfied until Dr. Pemberton tells me himself that you are uninjured.”

“A lump as big as a potato that’s all, miss; not worth minding, I assure you;” and he raised his hand to his occipital region. “An application, before retiring to bed, of ’Prang’s Blood and Life Regenerator,’ will make all right again. An astonishing remedy, miss, which no family should be without, and which may be obtained cheaply by the gross or dozen at my emporium. You have heard of Hercules Prang?”

These were the last words I heard distinctly from the lips of Napoleon B. Burress; nor were they answered, even by the brief “Never” which might have proclaimed my ignorance of the very existence of that demi-god of charlatanry, who, for the benefit of suffering mankind, had condescended to compel his genius into the shape of a “revivifying balsam.”

I had, with the aid of the house-maid, divested myself of my wet overshoes and wrappings before the advent of my companion, and had already ensconced myself in a deep Spanish chair, that stood invitingly and with extended arms in one corner of the fireplace, when he advanced to place himself on the rug for a general roasting.

It was precisely twenty minutes past ten, Mr. Burress told me later, when he detected, by stealing on tiptoe to my chair, and bending above me, that I was sound asleep, and the mantel clock was on the stroke of eleven when I awoke.

In one corner of the room sat a stern statue of Silence, in the shape of N.B. Burress, watching my repose, and from the adjoining office came the murmur of voices that proved that the long interview between Dr. Pemberton and his patient was still in progress.

At this moment, one of the walnut-leaves of the small folding-door, that formed a communication between the study and office of the good physician, swung itself gently on its noiseless hinges, into the position distinguished in description as “slightly ajar,” and thus remained fixed, after a fashion that spiritual mediums might have been able to account for, on supernatural principles.

The low murmur of voices then readily resolved itself into shaped words and sentences, and, but for my deep languor, and the delightful sense of security that possessed me, I should have risen and closed the obliging door, to shut out unintentional communications.

As it was, I lingered and listened, as one might do to the dash of waves, or the rustling of branches, until suddenly the tones and meaning of the principal interlocutor caused me to rise to my loftiest sitting posture, and clasp the arms of the chair I occupied, while the strained ear of attention drank in every syllable of the remainder of the narrative, evidently drawing near its close.

The low monotony of a continued discourse pervaded the voice, the manner of the speaker, the thread of whose story was no longer interrupted, as before, by the comments or questions of his companion, intent upon the vital interest of the tale.

“So I turned back at Panama,” said the raconteur, probably, of a series of adventures, “and abandoned my project altogether. The man spoke with an air and tone of truth: the sketch was unmistakably hers. The whole thing was full of vraisemblance, so to speak, and bore me completely off my feet. The initials beneath the sketch of Christian Garth were identical with her own.

“He referred me to Captain Van Dome for confirmation of the saving of the few remaining passengers on the raft, and her presence in the ship Latona, together with that of the child and negress.

“I have seen Captain Van Dorne, and he admits the part he played, on the representation of Bainrothe; and, through the evidence of a newspaper advertisement, of the previous autumn, which had met his eye, to satisfy the puerile scruples of this really good but ignorant man going no deeper than the surface in his code of morals they were obliged to tear out the record of their names, and take refuge temporarily in the long-boat, before he would swear to Miriam, in her state-room, that Bainrothe was not on board.

“As to the habeas corpus which would have gone into effect to-day, and which the wretch managed to defeat by requiring an error to be corrected in the writ, that no guiltless man would have observed, I fear sometimes it will prove ineffectual if we wait for the morrow. My plan was to go at midnight with a party of my friends to the house of this miscreant, and take the law in my own hands; but, in this I could not stir, for the reasons I have given you. Besides that, it was risking too much her safety and reputation.

“She cannot be secretly removed, of course, for we have a detective in the house able and strong, besides the old well-paid negress, both of whom ”

“Have played you false,” I interrupted, rising impetuously, and throwing back the loose leaf of the door, “and I am here to tell you this. O friends, have you forgotten me?”

And, rushing forward, I threw an arm around each of those dear necks, weeping alternately on the shoulder of one and the other of the two men I loved best in the world, and who, for some moments, sat silent and amazed!

Then Wentworth rose mutely, and clasped me to his breast, and silence prevailed between us. It comprehended all.

I think, when we meet again in heaven, after that severance which is inevitable to those who wear a mortal shape, we may feel as we did then, but never before! The rapture the relief the spiritual ecstasy surmounting, as on wings of fire, pain, fatigue, suspense, anguish of mind and body were in themselves lessons of immortality beyond any that book or sage has issued from midnight vigil or earthly tabernacle.

Not until a new order of things is established, and we have done with tribulation, tears, and death, shall we again know such sensations; nor is it indeed quite certain that human heart and brain could twice sustain them here below!