Doctor Remy possessed¹ 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 accomplishment². 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 wont³ to impart to objects the most familiar. The large, wooden houses, with their broad, shadowy piazzas⁴ and dim doorways⁵; 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 margin⁶ of grass and weeds, through which an isolated⁷ footpath⁸ took its solitary⁹ 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 countenance¹⁰ of Doctor Remy, as he came down the street, followed by the

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