12 TRUE RICHES; OR,

 

gling in temptation, and with all his inherited
cupidities bearing him downward.

Suddenly he starts, turns his head, and listens
eagerly, and with a strange agitation. Some one
had tried the door. For a few moments he stood
in an attitude of the most profound attention. But
the trial was not repeated. How audibly, to his
own ears, throbbed his heart! How oppressed was
his bosom! How, in a current of fire, rushed the
plood to his over-excited brain !

The hand upon the door was but an ordinary 0c-
currence. It might now be only a customer, who,
seeing a light within, hoped to supply some neglected
want, or a friend passing by, who wished for a few
words of pleasant gossip. At any other time Claire
would have stepped quickly and with undisturbed
expectation to receive the applicant for admission.
But guilty thoughts awakened thei’ nervous attend-
ants, suspicion and fear, and these had sounded an
instant alarm.

Still, very still, sat Edward Claire, even to the
occasional suppression of his breathing, which, to
him, seemed strangely loud.

Several niinutes elapsed, and then the young man
corimenced silently to remove the various account-
books to their nightly safe deposite in the fire-proof.
The cash-box, over the contents of which he lin-
gered, counting note by note and coin by coin, seve-
ral times repeated, next took its place with the books.
The heavy iron door swung 10, the key traversed
noiselessly the delicate and complicated wards, was
removed and deposited in a place of safety; and, yet
unrecovered from his mood of abstraction, the clerk

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