Miss Brentnall's behalf to stay by her bedside | at a time, until a year ago. And now you may night and day. My own income from the little shop in the Bowery was now so fair, that I felt able to repay in some measure the debt of gratitude I owed my kind friend for her many contributions to the walls of my lonely room. Accordingly, whenever I lighted on any new engraving or book of art or any embellishment to a sick chamber, which seemed likely to attract without fatiguing a strained mind, I brought it up to her in the evening. If I had not been in her debt already, I should have been a thousand times repaid for these little evidences of friendship, by the appreciative delight with which the childlike woman talked of them, for their own sake, and the grateful enthusiasm she bestowed upon them for mine. "The oppportunity to be kind and thoughtful was very short. At the end of the third week the doctor gravely told me that typhus pneumonia was becoming alarmingly prevalent in New York, and that Miss Brentnall's disease had taken that form. Furthermore, that unless some change for the better occurred in the course of the next twenty-four hours she would die. tell me you see it, without hurting me at all. Pride is past. Say that my face is the most unlovely in the world. Say it to please me!' "I saw she was in deep earnest, and I brought myself to answer for her sake: "Well. But your soul is the most lovely!' "I thank you for saying it, Orloff. And now, now that pride is past, I may tell you something which life would hide for ever, but death wrings out of my very soul. You have been a friend to me, a dear, kind friend, Orloff; but nothing more. I have been something else to you. A dying woman may say it. I have | loved you! "I heard this piece of news without the least outward sign of sorrow. It did not seem possible to me that I could lose this best, kindest friend I had in the world. You will think the reason whimsical perhaps; but merely because she was not beautiful, I felt as if she would not be taken away from me. ་ Only the beautiful die, only the beautiful,' I kept saying to myself all day in the shop or at the work-table. In the evening when I came back to the house I found that two things had occurred. Miss Brentnall's pulse had become feebler and she did not seem to me so plain as before. Then for the first time I began to be afraid. "In the morning the doctor took me into the entry, and told me that his patient might live till midnight but not longer. Wonld I take the painful office of breaking the intelligence to her? 'Yes,' I replied, hardly knowing what I said. "I entered the sick-room. As I came toward the bed, Miss Brentnall opened her eyes and smiled. "Martha,' said she, in a feeble voice, 'you may go down-stairs and get me some arrowroot.' "As soon as the nurse had shut the door behind her, Miss Brentnall continued: "I shall be dead in a few hours, Orloff. I have something to say to you alone. I am very sorry to go away from you. Very sorry. You have been kind to me, Orloff. More than any body else in the world.' "I took Miss Brentnall's poor, parched band, but could not answer. 'Orloff-kind as you are to me-in the bottom of your heart, you know that I have the most repulsive face you ever saw. Say yes, Orloff. You do know it. I have been sure of it since I was a little girl, six years old, thirty-four years ago, yesterday. I was never sorry for it, more than a moment "For a minute we were both silent, and then Miss Brentnall resumed: Passionately, passionately! Without once deluding myselfwithout once dreaming that there was a shadow of hope. Had you been blind; had you been deaf; so that you could never have seen what I am, or heard a word of it from other lips; even had you, under these circumstances, loved me, I should have felt it base to give you, in exchange for yourself, such a thing as I. you did see, you did hear, and I knew that I loved impossibly! You came in, now, to tell me that I would not live till to-morrow, did you not, Orloff?' But Do "I meant to, if I could,' was my reply. "I had a dream just before you came in. I thought I saw you, and you told me so. you know what a strange thing happened, just as you seemed speaking? But you are not angry with me for what I have said already?' Angry? My dear friend, no!' said I, instantly. At ""The strange thing was this. As you spoke, my deformed face fall off like a veil, and my body, like a cloak, was lifted from me. At the same moment, I had the power of being outside of myself, and I was-very beautiful! I was not proud, but I was glad. I drank in a whole fountain of peace at every breath. that instant I began to float farther and farther from you; but as I went I heard, Oh! such a sweet voice! saying: 'Again! Again! You shall meet again!' As you came into the room I awoke. And I have dared to uncover my whole soul to you, Orloff Ruricson, because those words are still in my ears. We shall meet again! And when we meet, I shall be beautiful!' "With all my respect for Miss Brentnall, it was impossible for me not to feel that she was raving. Indeed, from this very belief I took hope. I had seldom heard of cases like hers in which patients, almost in the very last hour, continued to be delirious. I therefore doubted the doctor's diagnosis, and persuaded myself that, since she had not arrived at the lucid interval preceding death, she was not so near it as he suspected. "Comforting myself with the assurance that I should see her well again, or, at least, that there was no immediate danger, I went down to my shop in the Bowery, leaving orders to send for me immediately if any change took place in Miss Brentnall. "After transacting the business of my trade, all day, I came back earlier than usual at evening, greatly depressed in spirits, but without any idea that I had seen my friend for the last time. As I put my latch-key into the door of the boarding-house, it opened. I saw the pale, frightened face of Martha, the nurse. She was just coming out after me. Miss Brentnall was dead. "And again I was alone in the world! II.-THE FLICKER'S CHAPTER, "There was a quiet funeral where I was the only mourner. There were days of loneliness succeeding, in which it seemed to me that the small isthmus by which I had been for a year attached to my fellow-men had been suddenly covered by the rising of a dark cold tide; that I was an islander again and the only one. "There was a will to be proved in the Surrogate's Court. Miss Brentnall's nurse and the landlady had witnessed it. I thought this strange at first, remembering what a friend the dead had been to me; but my surprise at not being a witness was soon supplanted by the greater one of being sole legatee. "There was a monument to be placed over the dead. To every detail of it I attended personally. I remember how heavy even that simple little shaft seemed to me, how much too heavy for a head that had borne so much of heaviness through life. Then I thought of her expression 'bird-resurrection,' of her perfect faith in the coming of better things; and if the monument had been a pyramid I would have known that it could not press her down. "It is one of my eccentricities that I fear good fortune; not bad fortune at all. For I have seen so much of it, that it only looks to me like a grimmer kind of father coming to wake his overslept son, and tell him unless he leaps from his feather-bed, and that right suddenly, the time for everything good in life will have gone by. I fear good fortune because I am not sure that I shall use it well. It may carry me till it has dwarfed me; I may lie on its breast till I have lost my legs; then whisk! it may slip away from under me and leave me a lame beggar for the rest of my life. "I resolved, therefore, that I would not touch a farthing of my new property until I had become quite familiar with the idea of owning it. It was all in stocks when I found it. I converted it into real-estate securities, and as fast as my interest came in deposited it in the bank. Meanwhile, I supported myself well upon the little shop; bought books, and laid something by. "I was busy one morning at my stuffingtable in the back-room when the bell over the street door rang; and, running into the front shop I found a new customer. He was a private bird-fancier, he told me, and had brought a specimen which he wished mounted for his cabinet. As he spoke he slid back the cover from a box which he carried under his arm; and as I looked in, expecting to see a dead bird, a live one hopped out and sat upon my finger. "I declare that is very curious!' said the gentleman; 'the creature never did such a thing before! I have had it eight months without being able to domesticate it in the slighest. It will not even eat or drink when anybody is in the room; yet there it is sitting on your hand.' "I had never seen such a bird before. It resembled the northern meadow-lark in size and shape; in hue its wings were like the quail's, its breast ash-colour, its tail mottled above like the wings, and of a delicate canary yellow beneath. But the greatest beauty it possessed was a bright crimson crescent covering the whole back of the head. 'What is this bird?' said I. "It is a flicker,' answered the gentleman. 'It was sent me by a friend living in Florida.' "Why don't you keep it alive?' "For the reason I've told you. It's perfectly impossible to tame it. My children and I have tried every means we can think of without success. If we confine it in a cage it mopes all day and eats nothing; if we let it fly about the room it sculks under the furniture as soon as we enter; if we take it in our hands it screams and fights. There is a specimen of the execution it can do in an emergency with that sharp long bill!' "And my customer showed me his finger, out of which a strip of flesh an inch long had been gouged as neatly as it could have been done with a razor. "It is nothing but vexation, that confounded bird"!' he continued. It does nothing but make litter about the house from morning till night; and for all our trouble it never repays us with a single chirp. Indeed, I don't believe it has any voice.' "Just then the flicker, still sitting on my finger, turned up its big brown eye to my face, and uttered a soft, sweet gurgle like a musicalglass. "Good heavens!' exclaimed the gentleman; it never did that before!' "Suppose you let me take it for a month or so,' said I; it seems to be fond of me, and perhaps I can tame it. I never felt so little like killing any bird in my life. We may make something of its social qualities yet.' "Very well,' answered the new customer. Keep it for a month. I'll drop it now and then to see how its education is getting on.' "You may hold me responsible for it, sir,' 1 replied; and the gentleman left my shop. "All day the flicker staid by me as I worked. Now it perched upon my shoulder, now on my head. At noon, when I opened my basket, it took lunch with me. When I whistled or sang, it listened until it caught the strain, and then put in some odd kind of an accompaniment: The compass and power of its voice was nothing | remarkable, but the tone was as sweet as a wood-robin's. I could not be enough astonished with the curious little creature. "Still, every kind of animal takes to me naturally. I accounted for the previous wildness of the flicker on the ground of mistaken management in the gentleman who owned it, and as a matter of professional pride determined to make something of the bird, were it only to show, like your Sam Patch, Tryon, that some things can be done as well as others. When I went home in the evening I took the flicker with me and made it a nest in an old cigar-box on my mantel piece. "The next morning when I awoke, the bird was perched above me on the scroll of the head- | board! Again I carried it down-town with me, again I brought it up in the evening. After that it was my companion everywhere. You will hardly imagine how it could become better friends with me than it did immediately upon our introduction. Yet our acquaintance grew day by day, and with our acquaintance the little being's intelligence. It had not been with me a fortnight before it knew its name. You may think it curious, perhaps unfeeling, but you know it was my only friend in the world, and in memory of the one who had lately held that place I called it 'Brenta.' "Brenta !' I would say, as I sat before my grate in the evening, and wherever the little creature might be it would come flying to me with a joyful chirp, light on my finger, dance on the hearth-rug, eat out of my hand, or go through the pantomime of various emotions I had taught it. If I said, 'Be angry, Brenta,' it would scream, flap its wings, and fight the legs of the chair. 'Be sorry, Brenta,' and it would droop its little head, cower against my breast, and utter notes as plaintive as a tired child's. "By the time the month was up it could do almost anything but talk. Its owner, who, to his great delight, had paid it several visits during the progress of its education, now came to take it home. "I have become very much attached to the little thing,' said I; 'won't you let me buy it of you?' "You should have asked me that when I first brought it,' was his answer. You have made it too valuable for me to part with now. To show you how much I think it is worth here is a ten-dollar piece for your services.' "I took the money, feeling very much as if I were receiving the price of treason. If you ever change your mind,' said I, 'remember that I am always ready with a generous bid.' "When we came to look for the flicker it was nowhere to be found. I could not believe it possible that it had heard and understood our conversation, but other hypothesis to account for its disappearance was not at hand. After hunting every nook and corner of the shop, I forced myself into the traitorous expedient of luring it by my own voice. Brenta !' I called. and the poor creature instantly hopped out of my coat-pocket, climbed up to my shoulder and nestled against my cheek. "The little rascal!' exclaimed the gentleman. "I could willingly have knocked him down! It was not until I had undertaken the business with my own hands that we could get the Flicker into the cage which the gentleman had brought with him. Even then the poor thing continued clinging to my finger with claws which had to be loosened by force, and went out of my shopdoor, screaming piteously and beating itself against the bars of the cage. "I had no heart for anything the rest of the day. At night my room seemed lonelier than a dungeon. The very next morning the owner of the bird came back with it in a terrible passion. "You have been teaching the thing tricks!' was his first exclamatior. "To be sure,' said I, mildly. 'Wasn't that what you wished me to do?' "Wished you to do ? to mope, and wail, and lie on the carpet like a dead chicken? Never to sing a note or eat a morsel ? To peck at the hands that brought food, and— and—' "I am sure I cannot help it, sir, if the bird has become attached to me, and mourns when away.' "You've taught the creature to do it! Look at this finger, will you? another piece taken clean out of it? Piece I say-steak I mean! The bird's a regular butcher! Here, kill the creature directly, and have it stuffed for my cabinet by this day week.' "And as he set down the cage on the counter, the Flicker, with a joyful cry, jumped to the wicker-door, and tried to pick a way out to me by its beak. "There! you see what you've done! Why don't the wretch act so to me?' "I really can't say, sir. Perhaps because I've had a great deal to do with birds, and naturally know how to manage them." "Well, I don't care: stuff the thing, and I shall be able to manage it then myself." "May I make you a repetition of my offer? If you haven't a toucan in your collection, there is a very fine one I'll give you for the Flicker, stuffed only last Saturday. Here's a young pelican-a still rarer bird. Or how would you like a flamingo?" "Got 'em all,' replied the gentleman, curtly. And if I hadn't, I count the Flicker. Kill the thing, I say, and stuff it.' "Just then the bird cast on me a glance as imploring as ever looked out of human eye. For a thousand dollars I could not have done the wrong. "Really, sir,' said I, 'I prefer not to take the job. I am very much attached to your bird. I cannot bear to kill it.' "Pon my soul!' he exclaimed, 'if that isn't pretty for a taxidermist! I should suppose, to hear you talk, that you would faint at the sight of a dead sparrow! Well, you can get your courage up to stuff the bird, I suppose? As for | knew-indeed, almost the first thing I knew the killing, I'll do that myself.' "As the man said this he thrust his hand into the cage, and caught the Flicker by the wing. With a sharp cry his victim struck him again on the finger, enraging him more than ever. He opened his penknife, pulled the bird out, drew the blade across its throat, and out of the cruel gash there poured, mingling with the blood, a bitter cry like a woman's. I heard it, and every drop of my own blood returned to my heart. He let the bird drop upon the counter: it gave one hop, tumbled over in my hand, and its eyelids slid shut. "This day week, remember,' said the man, and went out of the shop, wiping his knife. "I took up the bird, laid it in my neck, and, I am not ashamed to say, cried over it. "There are a good many things which may happen between now and this day week. I am not one of those people who regard every misfortune that occurs to an enemy the judgment of heaven in their behalf. But I must say, that the event which occurred before that man's week was out, always seemed to me a direct blow from Nemesis. He was a very passionate fellow, subject to temporary fits of insanity: one of them came on in the morning when he was shaving, and he cut his throat as he had the Flicker's! "When his estate was settled nobody thought of the bird. I enclosed the ten dollars he had given me for its education in an anonymous note to his executors, simply stating that my conscience demanded it! and, having thus quieted that organ, kept the Flicker for myself. With a daguerrotype of Miss Brentnall's, found among a parcel of papers labelled 'To be burned,' and upon which alone, of all the parcel, I could not persuade myself to execute her will, I put the stuffed bird by. When I was too lonely to dare to be utterly alone, I went to the trunk where they were preserved, and looked at them. III. THE MARMOSET'S CHAPTER. myself, so abstracted, so moody was I-a paragraph appeared in the morning papers, to the effect that the celebrated Taxidermist and Aviarian Professor, Orloff Ruricson, was about to close his business, and make a voyage to Europe, Asia, and Africa, and hoped to return in two or three years, with a large and interesting collection of rare animals, to establish a Natural History Museum. "I had caused the appearance of this notice myself; but, when I read it, felt quite as surprised it by as anybody. In nerve and mind I was so worn out, that, although thoroughly resolved to make the move, the consolidation of the purpose into such a fixed form shocked me. "When the novelty of the idea passed off, I disposed of all my stock to various amateurs who knew me, and had every disposition to help me by paying large prices. I put the thirty thousand dollars I was now worth into such a shape that I could get its increase in regular remittances; packed the bird, the daguerreotype, and a small wardrobe, and took passage by barque for Genoa. "At sun-rise one Monday morning, the barque's yawl took me out to her anchorage. As I went up the ladder at the side, I heard an opera-air playing on board, and when I reached the deck, the first thing that met my eyes was an Italian grinder, with his organ and monkey. "Is that man going the voyage with us?' I asked the captain. "Yes, sir,' he replied; but he shan't play without permission after we get to sea. He's a Genoese, who has made enough in this country to keep a fruit-stall in his own, and so he's going home.' "Home! He had a home, and was going to it! I would have handed him my bank-booktaken his monkey and organ-to be able to say that. "As the tug hitched fast to us and we began walking down toward the Narrows, I crossed to the other side of the ship, that I might take a look at the fortunate man. 66 6 Certainly,' I said to myself, 'Fortune is blind.' He had a home; but he was one of the After the loss of my second only friend a most ill-favoured rascals I ever laid my eyes on. painful change came over me. I had risen Nobody would have taken him for a Genoesefrom the shock of Miss Brentnall's death with the New-Englander of Italy-rather for a Roan elasticity which surprised even myself-manesque cut-throat, or a brigand of the partly from the reason that my constitution was better by several months less of anxiety, grief, and application to business-partly because I felt assured that, as she said, we should sometime or other meet again. "When the Flicker died, I felt that this only thing hitherto left to love me, could never reappear. The kind heart of the woman would beat again; the kind heart of the bird no more forever. And strangely enough, the whole sorrow that I had passed through for Miss Brentnall's loss revived, and I went about my day's work bear.ng the weight of a two-fold melancholy. mountain, who had found his stiletto or his carbine good for only the slowest kind of shilling and taken to the nimble sixpence of the hand-organ, on the principle that honesty was the best policy. You have seen a thousand pen-and-pencil pictures of the fellow, and need no description of him from me. "As I stood beside him at the bulwarks his monkey leaped upon me. "Pardon, good gentleman,' said the Italian, with an abject smirk, and gave a jerk to the chain that brought back the little animal flying. "Never mind that,' said I; 'let him come to me. I am fond of monkeys: I would like to look at him,' H "As it pleases, then,' replied the Italian, | temporary death of slumber,' said I; 'there is with another smirk, and loosed the chain again: 'Go, Beppo!' "Beppo needed no command, but jumped instantly upon my arm and laid his cheek upon my bosom. As I patted his head, I examined him curiously, and found him the most beautiful little monkey in the world. A Marmoset, with a great brown, tender eye like a gazelle's; a face which varied its expression constantly without ever degenerating into the brutal leer of the common ape; a winning, confiding mien of head | and hand that was human, childlike; and a soft coronal of golden fur around his little skull, that added still more to his baby-like look, giving him the appearance of some mother's favourite, dressed for a walk in a bonnet of down. I don't known how I could have been guilty of the folly of becoming attached to the little fellow, after all the lessons of warning my life had taught me. But I did take a great fancy to him. Never a day passed during the whole voyage, in which he did not get many a tit-bit from my hands. He spent far more of the time with me than with his own master, and before long obeyed me with a hearty good nature, which he never thought of showing toward that musical brigand. "One sunny afternoon, when we were three weeks out, the captain, the grinder and myself stood upon the forecastle-deck, trying to make out a sail just visible on the horizon ahead of us. As usual, Bebbo was cutting his pranks about me. For a moment he would sit demurely on my shoulder, and hold his tail to his eye in mimicry of the captain's eye-glass. A second more, and he would be sitting in the fore-top. The next, and he came sliding down a halliard to his old perch. These antics interfered with our look-out, and I put my hand into my pocket to feel for something which might keep him still. Finding neither prune, nor nut, nor string, but only the purse which I always carried there, I drew it out and opened it, to look for a copper. As I committed this incautious act, I saw the eyes of the Italian cast a sidelong, sly glance at the gold that shone there, and I shut the clasp with an uncomfortable sense of having been very silly. At the same moment he stole away, like a cat, to the fore-stays, and pretended to be more earnestly interested than any of us in the sail. "The nights grew still warmer and warmer as we sailed on. The cabin became so close, that I ordered the steward to bring my mattress upon deck, and usually slept there under a shawl, unless we had rain. "I had lain down at about half-past eleven, upon one night in particular, utterly fatigued, sick at heart, despairing. As the tall masts nodded past the stars-the stars rather than the masts seemed moving-and in my heart I believed that even heaven itself was not permanent; that all things flickered and danced, and passed away as earthly hope had passed from my heart; nothing was fixed, certain, and to be striven for. Finally, I only wished to sleep. 'Let me die this happiness therein, and therein only.' I was more of a Lord Byron at that instant, more of a moral desperado, less of a Thomas Carlyle, a Goëthe, sanguine Yankee, who believes that the best way to get rid of misery is to suffer and work out, if you fall, always to fall on your feet and scramble out, than I had ever been in my life, Messrs. Tryon and Bonenfant! 'So,' said I, let me go to sleep.' "Would you believe it, that confounded little Beppo would not hear of such a thing! Over my face this minute, over my legs the next; now tumbling down on my breast from a line, now, as the sailors say, working Tom Cox's traverse, up one hatchway and down the other, past my side. "I could not get a wink of sleep. I tossed and tumbled, swore and grumbled. I called Beppo to me, and for the first time without success. "I was just about going after Luigi, bis master, when I saw that person creeping to me in the shadow of the mizen-mast. By the high cove of the after-hatch, I was quite hid from the stern, and the only person who happened to be there, the second mate, could see Luigi no more than me. "At that instant the monkey gave me a tweak of the hair that nearly made me scream out, and then ran away noiselessly forward. Luigi crept on and on. As he drew nearer, I could per. ceive a stiletto in his hand. Its blade gleamed faintly now and then in the starlight, so indistinctly that at first it looked like a trailing white ribbon. "I did not believe his first intention was to kill me. That would have been absurd as well as cruel. So I lay still and let him come close. I feigned myself fast asleep and snored heavily. "He knelt at my side, and, holding the knife over my heart with one hand, felt with the other in my pocket. Still I slept away for dear life. He found the purse: drew it out with a slow, gentle motion, and crept forward again on his hands and knees, thanking his saints in a whisper. I was on his back before he could turn round. He was lithe, but he was feeble, and I had him pinioned, prone upon his face, with the purse in his hand and the thanksgiving in his mouth, while it was yet half changed to a curse. Thus I forced from him both the stiletto and the purse, and threw the one over-board at the same time that I returned the other to my pocket. Then I arose, and we stood up face to face. "Shall I have you hanged at the yard-arm in half-an-hour?' was my first question. "The Italian looked me full in the face; his olive cheeks were like chalk, his lips quivered, but he did not speak. And then, as if suddenly understanding the cause of his failure, he ran forward to the fore-stay, where the marmoset was clinging and chattering. "I hurried after him. Catching him by the shoulder, I whispered in his ear: If one hair |