then, so, after some hesitation, I promised to employ my mysterious visitor if I had any occasion for a guide. It was a promise not easily forgotten. Morning, noon, and night he haunted us, always with the same air of mingled secrecy and determination. As it chanced, I was ill for several days, and unable to leave my room. Regularly after breakfast there would come a low, resolute knock at my door, and Eugene Aram, pallid, noiseless, authoritative, would slip in, and stand like a sentinel by my bed. It was extremely depressing, and always reminded me of the presentation of a lettre de cachet. I felt that I was wronging my self-elected guide by not getting well and going about, and his civil inquiries anent my health carried with them an undertone of reproach. Yet with returning vigor came a firm determination to escape this melancholy thraldom; and it is one of my keenest pleasures to remember that on the golden afternoon when I first climbed the Acropolis, and looked through the yellow columns of the Parthenon upon the cloudless skies of Greece, and saw the sea gleaming like a silver band, and watched the glory of the
