tion; but the natural influences which affect the uneducated mind commonly, had their due force on his. The secret cause is always mysterious, and commonly produces enervating and vague fears in the bosoms of all that class of people who engage in no thoughts beyond those called for by their everyday sphere and business. So with him. He had doubts, and in proportion with his ignorance were his apprehensions. Ignorance is of all things the most apprehensive in nature. He knew not whether she had the power that she professed, or that any one could possess such power, and his active imagination gave her all the benefit of his doubt. Still he did not fear. No one who knew his usually bold character, his recklessness of speech and action, would deem him liable to any fear from such influences as were supposed to belong to the withered tenant of that isolated hovel. And yet, when he thought upon the cheerless life which she led and seemed to love—when he asked himself what might be its pleasures or its solace—he could not avoid feeling that in its anti-social evidences lurked the best proof of its evil nature. Wherefore should age, poverty, and feebleness, fly so far, and look so harshly upon, the whole world around it? Why refuse its contiguity?—why deny, why shrink away from the prospect of its comforts and its blessings? Why? unless the mood within was hostile—unless its practices were unfriendly to the common good, as they were foreign to the common habit, of humanity? He knew, indeed, that poverty may at all times sufficiently account for isolation—that an acute sensibility may shrink from that contact with the crowd which may, and does, so frequently betray or wound it; and he also well knew that there is no sympathy between good and bad fortune, except as the one is apt to desire that survey of the other which will best enable it to comprehend the superior benefits of its own position. But that old woman had no such sensibilities, and her poverty was not greater—not so great, indeed, as that of many whom he knew besides, who yet clung to, and sought to share some of the ties and regards of society, though unblessed by the world's goods, and entirely out of the hope of a redeeming fortune. Did he not also know that she exulted in the thought that she was feared by those around her, and studiously inculcated the belief among the vulgar, that she possessed attributes which were
