wedding garments. I am there also, vowing to protect her; to stand up
and battle with the world for her; to be a barrier between her and
want. But I have not done it--I have been recreant to every principle
of honor or manhood, God help me."

"Now, Nick," said the conjuror, persuasively, "pick up the other shoe
and tell me what you see there. That is a mirror of the present."

"I see," groaned Nick, "in place of that fair-haired girl at the
church, then all happiness, a prematurely old woman, faded and
disheartened. Three ragged children cling to her scanty clothing. They
beg of her mere bread to keep off hunger. She has none to give
them--she draws them closer to her, and folding them in her emaciated
arms, kisses them. She gives them all she has--a mother's love."

"What more do you see," demanded the magician: "tell it all."

"Oh! maddening sight," sobbed Nick; "I see myself staggering from the
ale-house and reeling into what should be a home, where gaunt
starvation stalks the floor; where the hearth is fireless, and where a
starving family die upon a pallet of straw."

"You have seen it all," said the wizard. "It is bad."

"Yes, and the picture is as true as it is terrible. What demon
prompted you to come here to-night with your diabolical machinery, to
show me to myself so much blacker than I thought I was?"

Nick's queer little companion peered through the misty, uncertain
light of the cobbler's workshop with his sharp restless red eyes, but