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166 bring an unwonted glow to his wrinkled cheeks as he hastened away grasping tight his canvas bag of coin. The miser!

Can you make a story of such a life? It had its interest for the recording angel. But it was two years more to the next event we men must notice.

May the twenty-seventh, eighteen fifty-four. Old Jamie (old he had been called for thirty years, and now was old indeed) had finished his work rather early and locked up the books. All day there had been noise and tramping of soldiers and murmurs of the people out on the street before the door, but Jamie had not noticed it. Old Mr. Bowdoin had rushed in and out, red in the face as a cherry, sputtering irascibility, but Jamie had not known it. And now he had come from counting his coin, a pleasure to him, so nearly the old chest lay as full as it had been that day a quarter century before. He had been gloating over it with a candle in the dark vault; but a few rows more, and his work was done, and he might go—to die, or find Mercedes.

As he came out into the street, blinking in