Doctor Remy possessed in perfection the power of rapid concentration of thought. Otherwise, he would have taken a divided mind to the bedside of his second patient, that night, after leaving Bergan Hall. As it was, he was glad when the stroke of midnight set him free, body and mind; the one to find its way mechanically to the hotel, through the silent moonlighted streets of Berganton, the other to occupy itself in arranging and perfecting the details of a certain plan for his future advantage, which had suddenly shaped itself out before him, so distinctly, if roughly, that he had already taken an important step toward its accomplishment. It now remained to provide for the rest of the way.

The midnight heaven was without a cloud, and the moon filled it with white radiance. Every object down the long line of the town\'s principal street was shown with the clearness of noonday, but also with the ghostlike awfulness that moonlight is wont to impart to objects the most familiar. The large, wooden houses, with their broad, shadowy piazzas and dim doorways; the wide, empty sidewalks; the great, shining-leaved oaks, dotting the silvered highway with black islands of shadow; the narrow wheel-track, with its broad margin of grass and weeds, through which an isolated footpath took its solitary way to every gate;—all were distinctly visible, but with a singularity of aspect that seemed to change their whole character and meaning.

And perhaps something of the same effect extended to the countenance of Doctor Remy, as he came down the street, followed by the dreary echo of his own lonely footsteps, as if dogged by immitigable fate. To his features, as to all other objects, the moonlight seemed to impart a new expression. Those who were best acquainted with him, had any such been abroad, would have needed to look twice at his dark moody countenance, and the ominous gleam of his deepset eyes, to feel themselves quite sure of his identity. Continuing to brood over the casual encounter, as they pursued their way, they might have tried to divine what sombre energy of purpose it was that had lit his eyes with such deep, dusky light, and marked his brow and eyes with lines so sternly rigid; shuddering, too, to think how remorselessly he would sweep from his terribly direct, if underground, path, whatever object should intervene between himself and his goal. Then, seeing how the moonbeams had subtilized some mean hovel into a phantom palace or tomb, wrought of alternate silver and ebony, they would be fain to set down both the origin and substance of their reflections to the same magical agency, and breathe more freely in making haste to forget the whole matter.

Secure in the absence of all observation, the dark face kept on its way through the silent street, giving its features the fullest liberty of evil expression. Opposite the principal dry goods store of the street, it paused for a moment; its restless glance had caught sight of a faint gleam from one of the rear shutters, which was plainly not moonlight.

"They are up late," muttered the doctor, "or there is mischief afoot. Well! what is it to me? Have I not enough else to think of?" And he kept on his rapid way.

But the incident seemed to have set free the faculty of speech. Words began to drop from his set lips; short, disconnected sentences, through which, nevertheless, there ran a distinct thread of suggestion.

"I have waited long enough,"—so ran one of these half-involuntary utterances,—"I have waited long enough for Fortune\'s willing favors; it is time to grapple with the exasperating jade, and wring them from her reluctant hands, by fair means or foul. For what else was I endowed with talent, daring, energy, and will, beyond most men? Not, certainly, to waste them all in earning a bare subsistence, or little more, as I am now doing."

"Is it my fault," he went on, in broken, detached sentences,—"is it my fault that Fortune never shows herself to me, save at the farther end of some dark vista which the world calls crime?—Pshaw! what is a life, one worthless, drunken, half-worn-out life, in comparison with the ends that I have in view,—increase of knowledge, expansion and perfection of science, and through them—as a casual end, I do not pretend that it is a direct one, for me—the advancement of the human race.—The plan seems feasible, as much so, at least, as anything can be, in this miserable, mocking world, where Fate seems to delight in balking the best talent an............