Waterbury evening Democrat., 1892-01-09

For 1ew SecOndS m1chael StOoQ at the open window and let the cool air breathe upon his worn face. The scent of violets fioated up from the old gar den; the bell began to ring for evening prayer, and sleeping memories awolce with the perfume and chime. How sweet and familiar all this had been once! He thought he had forgotten the past, but here it was within him, fresh and living still.
 As he turned from the window his eye fell on a sculptured head, just then illuminated by the evening light. It was crowned in kingly fashion, and the royal circlet rose above a massive brow, and d cruel, clever face. The nose was straight and delicate; a amustache hung over the mouth, but did not hide the firm outlines of the thin lips that were curved into a faint but mocking smile. The sharp contour of the cheek and the sunllen temples told of wasting mental toll. A man with such face might have been versed in all the wiles of statecraft; he would have worked with his scheming brain but never with his hands He might have raised ar mics, and directed their advance upon the foe, but he would never had led them on to battle with his own sword. It was face that could have looked on unmoved while men and women were tortured, and even the soft western light that shone upon it with gentle glow could bring out no sign of tender ness or nobility.
 Yet somewhere, whether lately or in the far past he could not tell, Michael had seen a face that resembled this. There was something familiar in the chiscling of the features and the up right line between the brows. He stood and gazed at it with a curious feeling Of rcpulsion and strange dread He was , afraid of the face; absurd as it seems, he felt that it was mocking him, and dcfying him to find that other face that was like it.
 Then, with sudden impulse, he walked to the glass. and looked at him self. There was no mistaking the like ness now, that crowned human fend had features like his own. In that carven stone he saw all that was evil in his own visage deepened and intensi- fed. A few more years of selfish scheming and of deliberate scorn of all holy things, and then his mouth would take that pitiless curve, and that Satan lC smile mlSnG Oe SIaLnPeu upon lC unLll it turned to dust.
 He shuddered and passed his hand across his eyes. Had he been led here to receive a mute warning? Weakened l by long-neglected illness, weary with incessant toll, he could not shake off this idea as he would have done once. It would haunt him sleeping and waking with a fear that he had never known till now.
 And was it, after all, merely morbid fancy? So great are the possibilities of good and evil within us that every one may carry about in his soul the future angel or the future fiend. The man who by his own will has been left to I himself" may well be startled if he gets ] a glimpse of that which self may be- come. That God does sometimes vouch- safe these glimpses of the possible we cannot doubt. "There, but for His grace, goes John Bradford" cried the old Puritan preacher when he saw the criminal led to execution.
 "I will go out of doors," thought
 Michael, as he left the room. "A walk 1 through the old village will calm my
 nerves, and insure a quiet night"