What man or woman can comprehend the secret influences that surround the soul. Keep guard; and when the blood stagnates within, when secret shudders, and gloomy thoughts, and inharmonious feelings arise, be sure that some poison-breathing foe is at hand. Set the door ajar, and resolutely turn your face from the secret influence that would destroy you. CHARLOTTE BRONTÉ. (CURRER BELL.) _AGNES REEF.--A TALE_. CHAPTER I. I was brought up and educated by my bachelor uncle. He was a reticent, moody man, and with his aged housekeeper and myself, led a solitary and unsocial life in the old rambling house which had been his father’s before him. I was but a child of six years when destiny placed me under his charge, and with him I remained eleven years; a scared, repressed little thing, revelling in strange fancies in the spidery attic rooms, and looking down through the dusty cobwebbed windows upon the life and movement below, unconscious that I formed a part of that active humanity. Thus I lived until I entered my seventeenth year. For the last two years my mind had been expanding and growing discontented with my lot. The moroseness of my uncle, the sullenness of his housekeeper, the gloom and dinginess of the bare rooms had grown insupportable to me. These alone I might have endured, but added to them were other sources of disquiet, not the least of which being hints from the housekeeper that it was time I began to do something for myself. Youth, pride, and ambition stirred within me, and I actively set about looking, for a situation. I had not long to wait; in one of the weekly papers, of which my uncle took many, I one day discovered an advertisement, which to my morbid fancy seemed sent by fate especially to me. A young lady was wanted to take charge of the education of a boy of eleven years. Upon reading this advertisement, I immediately sat down and wrote a letter, offering my services. By return mail I received a note acknowledging the receipt of mine, and stating that as I was the only applicant and my testimonials satisfactory, I was accepted. I informed my uncle of my good fortune. He received the news with a gruff approval, adding that he hoped I would do well, as I could expect no further pecuniary aid from him than would be sufficient to carry me there. My emotions, as I packed my little trunk on that memorable Saturday, were of a mixed character; but pleasure predominated. Hope beckoned me on; and the sadness attendant on breaking loose from the unfriendly home in which I had lived so long was but transitory. Monday morning saw me seated composedly in the rail-coach on the way to “Bristed Hall,” my destination. Towards nightfall we stopped at a station in a desolate, sparsely-inhabited district. My road diverging here, I hurried out, and the long train which connected me with my past life sped out of sight.