favor, leaving you all the property I may be possessed of at the time of my death. Would you know when that time will be?" "Do not speak so, Emily," said Charlton, in tones meant to be pathetic. "It may be an agreeable surprise to you," continued the invalid, "to learn that my time in this world will be up the tenth of next month. I will sign the will, on one condition." “Name it!" said Charlton, eagerly. "The condition is, that you pay Toussaint a thousand dollars cash down as an indemnity for the expense he has been at on my account, and to cover the costs of my funeral." With difficulty Charlton curbed his rage so far as to be content with the simple utterance, "Impossible!" "Then please go," said the invalid, taking up a silver bell to ring it. 66 Stop! stop!" cried Charlton. "Give me a minute to con sider. Three hundred dollars will more than cover all the expenses, - medical attendance, undertaker's charges,- all. At least, I know an undertaker who charges less than half what such fellows as Brown of Grace pile on. Say three hundred dollars." With a smile of indescribable scorn, the invalid touched the bell. 66 Stop! We'll call it five hundred," groaned the convey ancer. A louder ring by the lady, and the old negro's step was heard on the stairs. "Seven hundred, — eight hundred: O, I could n't possibly afford more than eight hundred!" said Charlton, in a tone the pathos of which was no longer feigned. The invalid now rang the bell with energy. "It shall be a thousand, then!" exclaimed Charlton, just as Toussaint entered the room. "Toussaint," said the invalid, "Mr. Charlton has a paper he wishes me to sign. I have promised to do it on his paying you a thousand dollars. Accept it without demur. Do you understand?" Toussaint bowed his assent; and Charlton, leaving the room, returned with his three witnesses. The sum stipulated was paid to Toussaint, and the will was duly signed and witnessed. Possessed of the document, Charlton's first impulse was to vent his wrath upon his wife; but he discreetly remembered that, while life remained, it was in her power to revoke what she had done; so he dismissed his witnesses, and began to play the fawner once more. But he was checked abruptly. "There! you weary me. Go, if you please," said she. "If I have occasion, I will send for you." 66 May I not call daily to see how you are getting on?" whined Charlton. "I really don't see any use in it,” replied the invalid. "If you will look in the newspapers under the obituary head the eleventh or twelfth of next month, you will probably get all the information in regard to me that will be important.” "Cruel and unjust!" said the husband. forgiveness in your heart?" "Have you no "Forgiveness? Trampled on, my heart has given out love and duty in the hope of finding some spot in your own heart which avarice and self-seeking had not yet petrified. But I despair of doing aught to change your nature. I must leave you to God and circumstance. Neither you nor any other offender shall lack my forgiveness, however; for in that I only give what I supremely need. Farewell." "Good by, since you will not let me try to make amends for the past," said Charlton; and he quitted the room. Half sorry for her own harshness, and thinking she might have misjudged her husband's present feelings, the invalid got Toussaint to help her into the next room, where she could look through the blinds. No sooner was Charlton in the street than he drew from his pocket the will, and walked slowly on as if feasting his eyes on its contents. With a gesture of exultation, he finally returned the paper to his pocket, and strode briskly up the street to Broadway. "You see!" said the invalid, bitterly. "And I loved that man once! And there are worthy people who would say I ought to love him still. love a cat or a hawk. Love him? Tell my little Lulu to How can I love what I find on testing to be repugnant to my own nature? Tell me, Toussaint, does God require we should love what we know to be impure, unjust, cruel?" “Ah, madame, the good God, I suppose, would have us love the wicked so far as to help them to get rid of their wickedness." "But there are some who will not be helped," said the invalid. "Take the wickedness out of some persons, and we should deprive them of their very individuality, and practically annihilate them." "God knows,” replied Toussaint; "time is short, and eternity is long, long enough, perhaps, to bleach the filthiest nature, with Christ's help." "Right, Toussaint. What claim have I to judge of the capacities for redemption in a human soul? But there is a terrible mystery to me in these false conjunctions of man and woman. Why should the loving be united to the unloving and the brutal? "Simply, madame, because this is earth, and not heaven. In the next life all masks must be dropped. What will the hypocrite and the impostor do then? Then the loving will find the loving, and the pure will find the pure. Then our bodies will be fair or ugly, black or white, according to our characters." “I believe it!” exclaimed the invalid. "Yes, there is an infinite compassion over all. God lives, and the soul does not die, and the mistakes, the infelicities, the shortcomings of this life shall be as fuel to kindle our aspirations and illumine our path in another stage of being." Here a clamorous newsboy stopped on the other side of the way to sell a gentleman an Extra. "What is that boy crying?" asked the invalid. "A great steamboat accident on the Mississippi," replied Toussaint. W CHAPTER XV. WHO SHALL BE HEIR? "I care not, Fortune, what you me deny, You cannot shut the windows of the sky, Through which Aurora shows her brightening face." Thomson. HEN we parted from Mr. Pompilard, he was trying to negotiate a mortgage for thirty thousand dollars on some real estate belonging to his wife. This mortgage was effected without recourse to the Berwicks, as was also a second mortgage of five thousand dollars, which left the property so encumbered that no further supply could be raised from it. The money thus obtained Mr. Pompilard forthwith cast upon the waters of that great financial maelstrom in Wall Street which swallows so many fortunes. This time he lost; and our story now finds him and his family established in the poorer half of a double house, wooden, and of very humble pretensions, situated in Harlem, some seven or eight miles from the heart of the great metropolis. Compared with the princely seat he once occupied on the Hudson, what a poor little den it was! A warm, almost sultry noon in May was brooding over the unpaved street. The peach-trees showed their pink blossoms, and the pear-trees their white, in the neighboring enclosures. All that Mr. Pompilard could look out upon in his poor, narrow little area was a clothes-line and a few tufts of grass with the bald soil interspersed. Yet there in his little back parlor he sat reading the last new novel. Suddenly he heard cries of murder in the other half of his domicil. Throwing down his book, he went out through the open window, and, stepping on a little plank walk dignified with the name of a piazza, put his legs over a low railing and passed into his neighbor's house. That neighbor was an Irish tailor of the name of Pat Maloney, a little fellow with carroty whiskers and features intensely Hibernian. 66 On inquiring into the cause of the outcry, Pompilard learned that Maloney was only larruping the ould woman with a bit of a leather strap, yer honor." Mrs. Maloney excused her husband, protesting that he was the best fellow in the world, except when he had been drinking, which was the case that day; "and not a bad excuse for it there was, your honor, for a band of Irish patriots had landed that blessed morning, and Pat had only helped wilcom them dacently, which was the cause of his taking a drap too much." With an air of deference that he might have practised towards a grand-duchess, Pompilard begged pardon for his intrusion, and passed out, leaving poor Pat and his wife stunned by the imposing vision. No sooner had Pompilard resumed his romance, than the dulcet strains of a hand-organ under the opposite window solicited his ear. Pompilard was a patron of hand-organs; he had a theory that they encouraged a taste for music among the humbler classes. The present organ was rich-toned, and was giving forth the then popular and always charming melody of "Love Not." Pompilard grew sentimental, and put his hand in his pocket for a quarter of a dollar; but no quarter responded to the touch of his fingers. He called his wife. Enter a small middle-aged lady, dressed in white muslin over a blue under-robe, with ribbons streaming in all direc⚫tions. She was followed by Antoinette, or Netty, as she was generally called, a little elfish-looking maiden, six or seven years old, with her hands thrust jauntily into the pockets of her apron, and her bright beady eyes glancing about as if in search of mischief. “Lend me a quarter, my dear, for the organ-man,” said Pompilard. "Ah! there you have me at a disadvantage, husband," said the lady. "Do you know I don't believe ten cents could be raised in the whole house?" And the lady laughed, as if she regarded the circumstance as an excellent joke. The child, taking her cue from the |