Let the curtain of night fall. The sun shone into an eastern window of No. -- H----n street the next morning, while Otis still slept. Its bright rays awakened him to the startling consciousness of having over-slept himself after a night of debauch. How should he get away without being seen? The thought troubled him sorely. But he soon determined what he would do; he would steal the veil from the face of the sleeping beauty to hide his own, and then slip out by the basement door, perhaps unseen. What harm could it do to her, since he had seen and knew the face so well? He dressed himself hurriedly, then gently drew the veil away, with a salvo to his conscience that he would not then see her face, he would look the other way. His conscience would have been more easy afterwards if he had kept that resolve. He could not. The glance at Athalia's beauty the night before had maddened him, and he turned, as he was going out of the door, to look back where she slept, and steal--"Thou shalt not steal"--he had forgotten that--steal one more glance. He did, but instead of the face of Athalia, he saw that of a common street-walker--a young harridan--and he rushed from the room with the full weight of a burning conscience for his folly, with a feeling of self-degradation at being victimized a second time by the same deceitful woman; hating himself and everybody else; dreading to meet any one he knew, and, finally, encountering in the basement hall, striving to get out in the same sly way, the very man whom he had first taken to task for visiting this den of infamy. What a recognition! Neither could speak, so intense was the thought in the mind of each that the other might ruin him by simply revealing the truth. Strange that neither thought how little the other would dare to speak, least it should be inquired, "How did you know he was there? Where was you?" Otis said afterwards to an acquaintance of mine, a physician, whom he was obliged to consult in consequence of that sinful night, that he could not conceive any agony more intensely painful in this life than that which he endured the next Sabbath, when he arose in the pulpit and looked down upon the congregation, but saw nothing, could see nothing, but that one pair of eyes glaring upon him just as they did the morning he met them in the hall of that house where he had been so disgraced. "I little knew then," said he, "as I did afterwards, that he felt just as bad as I did, for he told me that it seemed to him that I was about to denounce him to the whole congregation. So intense had this feeling become, that he was on the point of seizing his hat and rushing out when the words burst from my lips, 'if thou knowest aught of thy brother's failing, cover it up from the rude gaze of the world, for it can profit them nothing to know of his faults.' "'Go to him privately and speak kindly, and he will reform!' So he did, to our mutual benefit."