He felt already like one of the dead, to join whom he was hurrying headlong. He looked neither to the right nor to the left; and before him was a mist, in which the phantoms of his imagination disported themselves, to the exclusion of all other visible objects. Nothing earthly had any further interest for him. He did not even hear the steps of some one running behind him, nor hear the voice which called after him to stop; but his course was soon more effectually arrested by the firm grasp of a man's hand, which seized him by the arm with the force and the tenacity of a vice. He turned fiercely round. He was in no humor for the converse of casual acquaintances. Nor was it any gay convivialist of happier days whose face now greeted him: it was the old money-lender, who in a voice husky with loss of breath, or possibly emotion, said, thrusting couple of twenty-pound bank-notes into West' hand-- "Here! take these notes. Take them, I say!" he repeated, as the young man, dizzy with amazement, stammered out-- "You accept, then, my terms?" "No!" growled the usurer, "I _give_ them to you. Do you understand me? I say I _give_ them to you. I am an old man; I never gave away a shilling before in my life! Repay me if you will, when and how it please you. I have no security--I ask no acknowledgment; I want none. I do not count upon it. _It is gone!_" and the usurer pronounced the last words with an effort which was heroic, from the evident self-mastery it cost him. "There! go--go!" he resumed, "and take an old man's advice--Make money at all hazards, and never lend except on good security. Remember that!" The old man gently pushed West away, and all hatless and slippered as he was, ran back muttering to his den, leaving the object of his mysterious generosity fixed like a statue of amazement in the centre of the pavement. About three months had elapsed, when Bernard West once more knocked at the door of the money-lender. "Is Mr. Brace at home?" he inquired, cheerfully. "Oh! if you please, sir, they buried him yesterday," replied the servant, with a look of curiously-affected solemnity. "Buried him!" cried the visitor, with sincere disappointment and grief in his tone. "Yes, sir; perhaps you would like to see Miss Brace, if it's any thing very particular?" "I should, indeed," said West; "and when she knows the cause of my visit, I think she will excuse the intrusion." The servant gave an odd look, whose significance West was unable to divine, as she led the way to her young mistress's drawing-room. West entered timidly, for he doubted the delicacy of such a proceeding, though his heart was almost bursting with desire of expansion under the shock just received. A beautiful and proud-looking girl of nineteen or twenty years rose to meet him. Her large blue eyes, which bore traces of many and recent tears, worked strangely upon his feelings, already sufficiently excited.