object is to produce the effect of a supernatural
being; it is his fixed idea, and also one of the
elements of his success. A violinist with easy
gestures and a face like a thriving tradesman,
would not be a violinist, but simply a player on
the violin—which is a completely different thing.
With the above-mentioned qualities, it is not
difficult to conceive what must be a violinist's
love. It is passionate and timid. He feels for
the woman whom he loves, an indescribable
mixture of. opposite sentiments which oppress
and agitate his heart. His pride tells him that
he is not unworthy of the passion which he
might inspire, even were he to court a duchess;
but his timidity suppresses the avowal on his
lips, and he mostly confines himself to loving
and suffering in silence.

THE REAL MURDERER.
I.

I STOOD for several minutes looking in through
the shop-window, while my heart still shrank
back from the course I had marked out. If the
bookseller had been a stern, even a business-like
looking man, I should have given it up; but he
was mild and melancholy, and had the nervous
aspect of a man who had lately received a severe
mental shock. Having studied his face well, I
walked in quietly, and in a subdued, but steady
manner, told him I was in immediate want of
work, and that I had heard he was making
inquiries for a woman to undertake the stitching
in the binding-room of his establishment. He
replied, with a scared and sidelong glance at an
inner room, that he was indeed in urgent want
of a stitching-woman, but he also required one
who would live in the house, as his family were
not coming to dwell there; and that no person
who had applied for the place would consent to
that arrangement. To me, on the contrary, it
contained a promise of success, which I seized
instantly.

"Sir," I said, " I know all the circumstances;
but I am without a home, and I shall be willing
to agree to your terms. I am not easily frightened;
and I have been used to living in a house
alone for many years."

He seemed relieved by my words and steady
tone; but he regarded me with a slight air of
surprise and curiosity, seeing in me only a very
quiet, ordinary person, dressed in the plainest
garb of a workwoman. The terms he proposed
were liberal enough, and I agreed to them on
the spot; only desiring him to let me look over
the workrooms and dwelling-place. Mr. Saxon
called to an assistant to take charge of the shop,
and then led the way himself. The house was
empty of furniture, save a few articles in the
kitchen which I was to inhabit, and in a kind of
office for Mr. Saxon's use directly behind the
shop. Passing through the empty chambers we
ascended to the second floor, and entered the
binding-room, a large, low, unceiled workshop,
containing an old unused printing-press, and
the binding-press, upon which lay the tools just
left by the binder, whose feet we heard descending
the outer stair as we went in from the
house. In one corner of the room there was a
steep staircase. Taking up the candle from
the table where Mr. Saxon had put it down, I
stepped quickly and decisively towards it, without
waiting for any remark or objection, and he
followed me, though in silence and with some
hesitation. The stairs opened, without a doorway,
into an attic occupying the whole length of
the premises, with the black beams and rafters
of the peaked roof rising high overhead. A
narrow dormer-window, set into a little gable in
the slope of the roof, cast a scanty streak of the
red evening light across one end of the attic,
leaving the space beyond in deeper gloom. The
blackened floor was crowded with piles of reams
of paper reaching up to the blackened roof, with
here and there a narrow passage between them,
the widest of which led to a closet at the furthest
end, divided by a slight partition of lath and
plaster, and forming a separate room completely
dark and secret. I made my way to it with
some difficulty, and found it so filled with paper
that there was not space for a single person to
enter it. I stood still for a minute gazing down
the close walls of paper to the fading light in
the sky, a single line of lurid red just visible
through the dormer-window; and then I returned
to my white-faced and nervous master.

"You tell me you know all the circumstances,
young woman?" he said, in a low and tremulous
tone.

"I read them in the papers, sir," I answered,
"and I happened to have a relation who once
worked here—before your time—and we were
interested about it. Yonder closet is the very
place where old Mr. Saxon was found dead—
murdered, I suppose. Do you think the young
man, the apprentice, was really guilty of the
crime?"

"I cannot tell," he replied hastily; " the jury
acquitted him; and by this time he has left the
country, I hear. But this is no place to talk
about it. Are you willing to live in the house
alone?"

"Sir, I am very poor," I said, " and it will
suit my means to live where I shall have no rent
to pay. You see for yourself I am not nervous.
I have not even a place to go to to-night, and I
dislike the lodging-houses. If you will take me
in at once, I will fetch my things from the station,
and be back before the shop is closed for
the night."

There was little risk in taking me in, for all
the chambers and workshops could be secured;
and after my master had scanned my face for a
moment with his sidelong gaze, he gave his consent
for me to take possession at once, glad to
meet with a decent-looking woman who would
live in the house. In an hour's time, I had
removed my few goods into the empty dwelling,
and Mr. Saxon, after locking up his own room
and the shop, had taken his departure, bidding
me good night kindly, but with an air of mingled