 deep, submissive, unquestioning
reverence, and also a veiled happiness in her fair and quiet countenance.
    Drawing nearer, Priscilla recognized me, and gave me a kind and friendly
smile, but with a slight gesture which I could not help interpreting as an
entreaty not to make myself known to Hollingsworth. Nevertheless, an impulse
took possession of me, and compelled me to address him.
    »I have come, Hollingsworth,« said I, »to view your grand edifice for the
reformation of criminals. Is it finished yet?«
    »No - nor begun!« answered he, without raising his eyes. »A very small one
answers all my purposes.«
    Priscilla threw me an upbraiding glance. But I spoke again, with a bitter
and revengeful emotion, as if flinging a poisoned arrow at Hollingsworth's
heart.
    »Up to this moment,« I inquired, »how many criminals have you reformed?«
    »Not one!« said Hollingsworth, with his eyes still fixed on the ground.
»Ever since we parted, I have been busy with a single murderer!«
    Then the tears gushed into my eyes, and I forgave him. For I remembered the
wild energy, the passionate shriek, with which Zenobia had spoken those words -
»Tell him he has murdered me! Tell him that I'll haunt him!« - and I knew what
murderer he meant, and whose vindictive shadow dogged the side where Priscilla
was not.
    The moral which presents itself to my reflections, as drawn from
Hollingsworth's character and errors, is simply this: - that, admitting what is
called Philanthropy, when adopted as a profession, to be often useful by its
energetic impulse to society at large, it is perilous to the individual, whose
ruling passion, in one exclusive channel, it thus becomes. It ruins, or is
fearfully apt to ruin, the heart; the rich juices of which God never meant
should be pressed violently out, and distilled into alcoholic liquor, by an
unnatural process; but should render life sweet, bland, and gently beneficent,
and insensibly influence other hearts and other lives to the same blessed end. I
see in Hollingsworth an exemplification of the most awful truth in Bunyan's book
of such; - from the very gate of Heaven, there is a by-way to the pit!
    But, all this while, we have been standing by Zenobia's grave. I have never
since beheld it, but make no question that the grass grew all the better, on
that little parallelogram of pasture-land, for the
