“Your brother!” I echoed; and, in
the silence which ensued, rapidly perused
the beautiful face before me. Would
that the pen could do the office of the
pencil! Her complexion was clear brown,
with lips and cheeks of vivid red—the
very blossom and bloom of spotless and
virginal loveliness. Her nose was slightly
aquiline, her brows arched, her eyes
large and oval-shaped, and of a color that
trembled between the calm blue of noonday
and the brilliant darkness of midnight.
As for her hair, it was swept
aside from her forehead in rich masses
of jetty blackness. There was intellect
in that face, and pride and passion, and
a something which words cannot define,
and which, until a later day, I was never
able to analyze. The first effect of that
face was like enchantment; it seized the
eye and soul at once.

“Your brother?”

“My brother! Now in a—a—felon's
cell, with the prospect of hopeless imprisonment
before him,” she said, reaching
her hands toward me and fixing her
eyes full on my face. And at that moment,
the reality struck me that the
face of the boy-burglar was but a caricature
of the beautiful countenance on
which I gazed—one of those caricatures,
of which the world has many examples,
in which the face of an ugly brother
bears a vivid resemblance to the countenance
of a beautiful sister.

After she spoke, a pause of at least a
minute ensued. Absorbed by the sight
of her face, bewildered by the fascination
of her loveliness, which seemed to encircle
her like a presence and a veil of light,
I knew not what to say.

“Your brother,” I faltered at last,
“has been convicted of burglary—will
be sentenced in a few days—how can I
save him?”

“Oh! sir—bad example, hardship, corrupt
associations, have brought him to
his present condition. He is not bad at
heart. He may yet be redeemed from
all his evil habits. But, in any case,
save him from a fate worse than death—
from the hopeless moral death of the
State Prison.”

In her intensity she clasped her hands,
and bent forward in her chair, her eyes
centered upon my face.

“Would to heaven you had only applied
to me sooner!” I answered, in unfeigned
distress. “Something might
have been done. But I knew not that
he had a friend in the world, much less
a sister.”

These was a calm bitterness in her accent
as she interrupted me. “You knew
that he had not a friend in the world?
Alas! it is the way of the world! Had
he been surrounded with friends you
would have been merciful to him. But,
reflect, sir, thus friendless and alone, he
needed your forgiveness all the more.”

“But, why did you not appear before?”
I asked, somewhat hurt by the
calm bitterness of her tone. “I did not
see your face in court. You were not
present in the hour of his trial!”

She grew red and pale by turns, and I
saw the veins of her white throat swell as
with suppressed agitation: “Alas, alas!
I could not be there, it was out of my
power—utterly out of my power.”

And with evident signs of distress she
shaded her eyes with her hand.

“But how can I save your brother
now?” I said.

“You have influence,” she answered,
without removing her gloved hand from

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her eyes; “you have rich connections;
you have wealth—and—” suddenly lifting
her head, she flung the full brightness
of her gaze upon me,—“what is there
that cannot be done by the aid of—
wealth?”

Her nether lip trembled with a perceptible
tremor, and she beat the carpet
with her foot. For a moment I sat silent
and bewildered, scarcely knowing whether
the woman before me was a reality or
the creation of a dream.

At last I said, in a firm and measured
tone,—“Your brother is to be sentenced
the day after to-morrow. To-morrow I
will do all I can for him. At all events,
I will induce the judge to join with me
in procuring your brother's pardon from
the governor.”

The words had scarcely fallen from
me, ere she bounded from her chair,
seized my hand and pressed it to her
lips. “God bless you! God bless you!”
she cried, and then sank back in her chair,
covering her face with her hands and
weeping. I could not help sharing her
agitation.

“Where shall I see you to-morrow to
communicate to you the result of my
exertions?” I asked, anxious to remove
the embarrassment of the moment.
“Shall I wait upon you at your home?”

“No—no—no!” she responded quickly,
and with an accent of indescribable bitterness.
“Not there—not there!” She
rose from her seat and gathered her
shawl over her bust. “To-morrow night,
at this hour, I will wait upon you here.”

She drew her veil over her face, and,
without a sign or word of adieu, hurried
from the room. She was gone ere I was
aware of her intention to depart.

Gone! leaving me absorbed and bewildered
by the vivid impression of her
presence.

For a few moments I sat silent and
wondering, and then, seizing my cap and
cloak, hurried from the parlor and from
the house, anxious to carry out an idea
which had suddenly flashed upon my
brain.

A strange, wild idea, which came upon
me like an inspiration, and which urged
me far from my mansion, resolved upon
its immediate execution.

I was absent from my house for hours.
When I returned, it was late at night,
and the candle in the parlor had burned
to the last gleam. Seating myself by
the fireplace, where the coals among the
ashes emitted an uncertain light, I gave
myself up to the silent contemplation of
the scenes I had beheld, the words I had
heard since my departure from the mansion
some hours before. And the contemplation
harrowed me to the soul.

“Can it be that the scenes I have just
witnessed are real? that the words which
I have heard are anything but idle sounds
heard in a dream? Can such things exist,
under the glittering mantle of New-York
wealth and New-York luxury?”
Thus I found myself murmuring my
thoughts aloud, by the dim fire-light.
Alas! alas! too well I knew that all I
had witnessed that evening was sad
reality.

I had heard, I had seen. Did not the
bitter truths of my own life render possible
the darkest and apparently the most
improbable tragedies of every-day life?
Still, what I had heard and seen (during
my absence of a few hours) made me
shudder at the very recollection. That
night I slept but little.

Next day was full of work, of hurry
and incident for me. In the morning, I
busied myself with the case of the boy-burglar,
and in the afternoon went to a
private dinner-party, given by a jovial
merchant—a fat round man of fifty, as
fond of his bottle as of a rise in stocks,
with a shining bald head, set off by a
few veteran gray hairs—to some eight
or nine select guests.

Fancy a snug little room, the curtains
drawn, the champagne and hoc in ice,
the fire burning cheerily in the grate,
and (although the hour was early) some
seven or eight wax candles, disposed
along the white cloth of a well-loaded
board. It was altogether a bachelor's
dinner; and, after the cloth was removed,
we disposed ourselves comfortably in
our cushioned armchairs and began upon
the wine; that is all, save me. For myself,
I had important reasons for keeping
my head clear.

Among the guests there were two who
especially attracted my interest.

One was a man of the world, who, for
twenty years, had been a prominent actor
in New-York life, Burley Hayne,
sometimes called Captain Hayne, whose
tall form and broad shoulders were severely
clad in black, with a heavy gold

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chain across the dark satin waistcoat.
Burley had been handsome, but now
there were wrinkles about his protuberant
eyes, and deeper and uglier wrinkles
near the corners of his large mouth. His
teeth were still good, and only a few stray
gray hairs (thanks, perchance, to Goureaud)
appeared on his bushy dark whiskers
and thickly-curling black hair.

Burley was a man of the world of a
certain sort. He read nothing save a
sporting paper. He was familiar with
the niceties of faro. He loved to eat
good dinners—at the house of a wealthy
friend. He liked good wine, and liked
it best when it came from other people's
cellars. He was a duellist, too, and had
killed his man on more occasions than
one. Fashionable tailors looked up to
him, and rarely asked him for pay.

To complete his character, he was a
bachelor, and looked upon women with
not the most remote taint of platonic or
sentimental nonsense. Whether he had a
sister, I know not, but certainly he had
long forgotten that he ever had a mother.

Such was Burley Hayne, who, easy
and well-preserved, sat opposite me,
making the table roar with a few pages
from the manifold adventures of his life—
adventures which no one would think
of telling within the golden covers of a
New-Year's annual.

I may remark that the gallant captain
was deeply in my debt for borrowed
money.

Beside Burley, listening to his jokes,
and laughing at them in a shrill voice,
was an older man of the world, very tall
and lean, with a narrow forehead, haggard
face, and big bloodshotten and feverish
eyes.

Dressed with much nicety, with high
shirt collar, black stock and ruffled bosom,
this gentleman, who may have been
about fifty—he looked sixty—bore every
appearance of a man of the world pretty
thoroughly used up, and still with
the feverish memories of past enjoyments
burning in his bloodshot eyes. There
was something pitiful in the way in
which this antediluvian man of the
world, called Col. Elephalet Cloud, hung
upon every accent of the fresher and
more modern Captain Burley Hayne.

A stranger could not help thinking,
that, somehow or other, the captain held
the colonel in his power.

Well, we sat at our wine, by the pleas
ant light of the wax candles, and in the
cheerful warmth of the fire; every face,
from that of our jocund host, at the
head of the table, to that of the cadaverous
Colonel Eliphalet Cloud, convulsed
with laughter as Burley related his adventures—
every face save mine. I was
quiet and grave; if I did laugh, the
laugh was forced and hollow. Perhaps
the thought of my appointment in the
evening with the sister of the young
felon, kept me grave; perhaps—well!
perhaps—

Burley's adventures were of the most
interesting character. Now, it was a
story of a race-course; now, of a gambling
scene into which he had unexpectedly
happened; now, of a duel, in which
he had winged his man just between the
eyes; and now, there was a lady in the
case—it was always something quaint
and very rich. But the crowning story
of the evening was about a trout-fishing
excursion which Burley had taken the
previous summer into some lake country
of a New-England State. He had
put up at the house of a quiet farmer,
near the lake, and been made at home as
a welcome guest. The farmer and his
wife had an only daughter, a rosy girl
of seventeen. Burley staid a few weeks
at the house, trout-fishing and—making
love. Time came for him to leave, and,
under promise of marriage, he induced
the farmer's pretty daughter, one night,
to leave her home and come with him to
New-York. She came with him, and—

“The fact is, gentlemen,” continued
Burley, shutting one eye, as he took a
look at a candle through a long-necked
glass, brimming with champagne, “she
was so rosy, so blooming, and so innocent,
so d——d innocent, do you
know,” he looked round with an expression
of the most grotesque serio-comic
character, “that she actually expected
me to marry her!”

“Expected you to marry her!” echoed
Col. Cloud in his shrill voice, and he followed
his exclamation with a screech of
the shrillest laughter. “Good! Egad!
Ah! What next?”

The host at the table also laughed, and
then looked grave, as though a little
ashamed of his laughter; but, as for the
other guests, warm as they were with
wine, they made the room ring again.

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