“Now you look something like going for the doctor!  My overcoat, Caleb—­gloves—­fur-cape—­cane!  All hanging near the bed.  There, we are ready now for old Borealis himself, if he chooses to blow!  But I forget—­God bless me, you are as pale as the ghost of Pompey, at Philippi!—­Caleb, the Perkins elixir—­a glass!—­Now, young lady, just take it down at a gulp.  It is the only alcoholic preparation that Napoleon Bonaparte Burress ever suffered to pass his temperate lips.  Father Matthew does not object to it at all, I am told, on emergencies.  It may be had at this repository very low, either by the gross or dozen.”—­speaking the last words mechanically, and he tendered me a small glass of some nauseous, bittersweet, and potent beverage, that coursed through my veins like liquid fire.

“Thank you; it is very comforting,” I gasped, and, setting the glass down on the counter, I covered my face with my hands and burst into tears.

The whole forlornness of my outcast and eleemosynary condition rushed over me simultaneously with the flood of warmth caused by the Perkins elixir, which nerved me the next moment for the encounter with the elements.

I saw the kindly master of the emporium turn away, either to conceal his own emotion or his observation of mine, and Caleb stood trembling and crying like a girl before me.

I had shrunk, it may be remembered, from the description Sabra gave me of McDermot, when I heard of his red hair and “chaney-blue eyes;” but to this red-haired, hazel-eyed man I yearned instinctively, for there are moral differences discernible in the temperament greater than any other, and, when a red-haired man is tender-hearted, he usually usurps the womanly prerogative, and gushes.

But Caleb’s sympathy touched me even more.

“We will go now, if you please,” I said, recovering myself by a strong effort, and Napoleon B. Burress mutely tendered me his stout, overcoated arm.  “The short way you mentioned—­let us go that way, if not disagreeable to you,” I pleaded.

“Oh, no; it will be an absolute saving of time to me; but, I warn you, the alley is narrow and dark!”

“Never mind; I prefer the short cut, be it what it may.  Time is every thing to me.”

We passed through the shop, threaded a narrow entry, opened a back-door, which gave upon a strip of paved yard, leading in turn to a back-gate, through which we emerged into a dark and dirty-looking alley.

But first the work of unlocking a padlock, which confined a chain, had to be effected, and, while Mr. N.B.  Burress was thus unfastening his back-gate preparatory to egress, I stood gazing back, Eurydice-like, in the place I had left, for the doors of the long entry stood open, revealing the shop beyond and its illuminated window.

Standing thus, I saw, as through a vista and in a perfect ecstasy of terror, the ground-glass shop-door open, and two well-known forms in succession block its portals—­those of Gregory and Bainrothe!  Would Caleb send them on our track, or would the better part of valor come to his aid and save me from their clutches?