“No doubt.  I’ll see if I can’t come across Bill; he is too good a customer to lose.”

And so saying, Mr. Graves retired from the bar-room, to get his dinner, feeling better satisfied with himself than he had been for a long time.  After eating heartily, and drinking freely, he went into his handsomely furnished parlour, and reclined himself upon a sofa, thinking still, and with a pleasurable emotion that warmed his bosom, of the success of his expedient to draw custom.  He had been lying down, it seemed to him, but a few moments, when a tap at the door, to which he responded with a loud “come in,” was followed by the entrance of a thin, pale, haggard-looking creature, her clothes soiled, and hanging loosely, and in tatters about her attenuated body.  By the hand she held a little girl, from whose young face had faded every trace of childhood’s happy expression.  She, too, was thin and pale, and had a fixed, stony look, of hopeless suffering.  They came up to where he still lay upon the sofa, and stood looking down upon him in silence.

“Who are you?  What do you want?” the rum-seller ejaculated, raising himself up with a strange feeling about his heart.

“The wife and child of one of your victims!  He is dying, and wishes to see you.”

“Who is he?  What is his name?” asked the tavern-keeper, while his face grew pale, and his lips quivered.

“William Riley,” was the mournful reply.

“Go home, woman!  Go home!  I cannot go with you!  What good can I do your husband?”

“You must go!  You shall go!” shrieked the wretched being, suddenly grasping the arm of Mr. Graves, with a tight grip, while her hand seemed to burn his arm, as if it were a hand of fire.

A sudden and irresistible impulse to obey the call of the dying man came over him, and as he arose mechanically, the mother and her child turned towards the door, and he followed after them.  On emerging into the street, he became conscious of a great and sudden change in external nature.  On retiring from his bar an hour before, the sun was shining in a sky of spotless beauty.  Now the heavens were shrouded in dense masses of black clouds that were whirling here and there in immense eddies, or careering across the sky as if driven by a fierce and mighty wind.  But below, all was hushed and pulseless as the grave; and the stagnant air felt like the hot vapour over an immense furnace.  The tavern-keeper would have paused and returned so soon as he became conscious of this fearful change, portending the approach of a wild storm; but his conductors seemed to know his thoughts; and turning, each fixed upon him a stern and threatening look, whose strange power he could neither resist nor understand.

“Come,” said the mother in a hollow, husky voice; and then turned and moved on again, while the tavern-keeper followed impulsively.  They had proceeded thus, for only a few paces, when a fierce light glanced through half the sky, followed by a deafening crash, under the concussion of which the earth trembled as if shaken to its very centre.  The tavern-keeper again paused in shrinking irresolution, and again the woman’s emphatic,