"What! to-night? It is now ten o'clock, time all respectable citizens were in bed. It is too late." "No, it is never too late to begin to do good. It is just the hour that the lives of the inmates of such houses, as we propose to visit, begin. From this till one or two o'clock, drinking, carousing, swearing, and all sorts of revelry and debauchery, and then----it is well that night has curtains. Now this house where we are to go, however, I take, from its location, to be one of a different character, one that maintains a show of respectability, yet is one of the most dangerous, for its victims are drawn from among a class just as good as Stella has described Mrs. Morgan." "You think, then, that we may go there safely, at this hour of the night?" "As safely, as respects our persons, as to church. As dangerously, as respects our morals, as the poor weak bird fluttering within the charmed circle of the fascinating serpent." "As to that I fear nothing." "So has said many a one. I say, 'He must have a long spoon that must eat with the devil,' or he will soon come to such familiarity that he will eat freely out of the same dish. No man is proof against the fascinations of a designing woman. But as we go doubly armed, for our cause is just, let us go, go at once, for I see you are excited about that name. It would be strange, if it should prove to be your niece." "Yes and stranger still, the way that we have been brought together, and to a knowledge of her, through our mutual sympathy for this little pedler girl, such an one as we may see every hour in the streets, without exciting a passing thought. What a mysterious power governs all our actions, and how we are influenced and turned aside from the path we had marked out, by the most trivial circumstances. I had seen this little girl come in here and offer her little wares a score of times, without paying any attention to her or her movements, except to wonder how any mother could trust such a child, bright, good-looking, free spoken, forward--that is, precocious--among so many fops and libertines, who would take advantage of her some day, and by deceit and money work her ruin. Last night I had put on my gloves and hat, and was just walking out as she came in with her 'Please to buy this, sir,' and why I did not go out I cannot tell, but some unaccountable influence turned me back, and I picked up a paper and sat apparently absorbed in its contents, while my ear was open and mind awake to every word and movement of the libertine rascal who made a pretence of buying liberally, to induce her to go up to his room to get the pay. I followed, watched him to his room, heard the key turn in the lock, heard all his conversation, his vile proposals, and her virtuous rejection, with an energy, 'that she had rather starve and see her mother dead;' and then I heard a struggle and I knew the villain was using his brutal strength upon a weak girl, and then I burst the door, and then--you know