It will often happen that what ought to turn the human mind from some peculiar tendency produces the opposite effect. One would think that the perusal in the newspaper of some crime and capital punishment would warn away all who had ever meditated the crime, or dreaded the chance of detection. Yet it is well known to us that many a criminal is made by pondering over the fate of some predecessor in guilt. There is a fascination in the Dark and Forbidden, which, strange to say, is only lost in fiction. No man is more inclined to murder his nephews, or stifle his wife, after reading Richard the Third or Othello. It is the _reality_ that is necessary to constitute the danger of contagion. Now, it was this reality in the fate, and life, and crowning suicide of Chatterton, that forced itself upon Leonard's thoughts, and sat there like a visible evil thing, gathering evil like cloud around it. There was much in the dead poet's character, his trials, and his doom, that stood out to Leonard like a bold and colossal shadow of himself and his fate. Alas! the bookseller, in one respect, had said truly. Leonard came back to him the next day a new man, and it seemed even to himself as if he had lost a good angel in losing Helen. "Oh that she had been by my side," thought he. "Oh that I could have felt the touch of her confiding hand--that, looking up from the scathed and dreary ruin of this life, that had sublimely lifted itself from the plain, and sought to tower aloft from a deluge, her mild look had spoken to me of innocent, humble, unaspiring childhood! Ah! If indeed I were still necessary to her--still the sole guardian and protector--then could I say to myself, 'Thou must not despair and die! Thou hast her to live and to strive for.' But no, no! Only this vast and terrible London--the solitude of the dreary garret, and those lustrous eyes glaring alike through the throng and through the solitude." CHAPTER XVIII. On the following Monday, Dr. Morgan's shabby man-servant opened the door to a young man in whom he did not at first remember a former visitor. A few days before, embrowned with healthful travel--serene light in his eye, simple trust in his careless lip--Leonard Fairfield had stood at that threshold. Now again he stood there pale and haggard, with a cheek already hollowed into those deep anxious lines that speak of working thoughts and sleepless nights; and a settled sullen gloom resting heavily on his whole aspect.