The Northern Star, And Farmers' And Mechanics' Advocate

From the New-England Magazine.

THE DEMON OF THE CLOSET.

Frank Seymour was, for many years, friend and companion. He was a—but 30 years old when I first met him, and was fast rising to eminence at the bar. He was the husband of one of the most charming women in the village, and the father of a bright flaxen-headed boy, upon whom he doted with all a father's kindness. He was the favorite of all who knew him, and his house, which was the prettiest in the neighborhood, was a frequent resort for all his friends who loved to visit a scene of such unmingled happiness as they there witnessed. Frank was justly proud of his beautiful wife, and was never so happy as when, released from the cares of his business, he could sit in his own snug parlor, with his boy on his knee, and listen, while she sung some favorite air to her piano, or join in the merry laugh that was so often heard from the cheerful group that gathered around her fire side on a winter's evening. There never was a happier creature than his wife then seemed to be.— His heart seemed literally full of joy to overflowing.

The first time that I met Frank was at a little party at his own house. I shall never forget the agreeable impressions which I received at that visit; and if there ever was a man whom I envied it was he. He was not rich, but every thing around him wore such an air of comfort and neatness, and there was such a finishing touch of taste upon every thing within and around his house, that no one could fail of being struck with whatever he saw there. There was no idle expense of decoration, but the furniture was so judiciously selected, and the ornaments so tastefully arranged, that his parlor was really a pleasanter object to the eye, than many a gorgeously furnished drawing room of a far more princely mansion.

He was not rich, as I have said, but he had been so far successful in business as to be above the fears of poverty, and he was sometimes suspected of an undue propensity to acquire wealth.

There was a closet which opened into his parlor; in which he was understood to keep his private papers, and whatever money he might possess, the door of which was ever carefully locked; and as his wife never made any inquiries into his pecuniary concerns, she never felt any curiosity to examine what his closet contained.

His fondness for money seemed to increase with its possession, until it became a passion, which could no longer escape the attention and remark of his friends His visits to the place of deposit—of his wealth were more frequent, and, with a growth of this passion, there came over his manner, in his ordinary intercourse with his friends, which they could not describe, but could not fail to feel and lament. Frank, however, was still the same noble fellow before the world that he had ever been, and appeared at times with such a brilliancy and power as to surprise even his admirers ; and whatever might have been the seeming coldness of his manner to his friends at one time, he was so ardent, so generous and fascinating at another, that they forget his former coldness and were ready to forgive every weakness of its nature.

his wife, that any change had taken place in her husband's manner or There indescribable something, which a hade her sad; but it was a feeling—so new to her 10 did not know how to trace it or to to ascribe it. She often saw a frown upon her husband's brow, but she did not doubt it was that of care or abstraction, which the perplexities of business might have planted there, and she was satisfied with this method of explanation. He had become less and less frequently the companion of her evening hours, but she knew that business engagements detained him, and she cheered the long and lonely hours that she spent in waiting his return, with a thought that it could not be long before this time of toil would take place to competency and ease, when he might again enjoy the society of one—for whom she had cheerfully given up the world. And when she heard his well known step, she forgot the time she had impatiently watched his approach, and ed him with a wife's sweetest

d Frank's visits to his treas- ure frequent than formerly, ared anxious to avoid the ob- of others especially of his wife, er he made them. Often did she n leave his bed at midnight, and listen to the sound of his footstep as it was directed to this closet ; and the sound of the bolt, as he unlocked the door, grated harshly on her ear at that still hour, when no other sound could be heard but the soft breathing of her infant, that slept undisturbed by her side. Nor could she fail to remark a wildness in his eye, and a hurried confusion of manner in her husband, whenever he returned from his secret haunt to his couch, which were alike strange and unaccountable to her. She did not however, allow her thoughts to dwell o these appearances, and still struggled to be happy as before

- Such was the state of things when the birth of a third child rendered it necessary for Frank to employ the services of one of those ancient matrons who become the repositories of village scandal, and whose early wrought fancies reveal in creations of the wonderful and the strange.

She had known Frank when he was the delighted father of his first-born, and she saw him now the cold, indifferent, unfeeling parent of a third innocent and helpless infant. She saw, too. that there was a change in every thing around her. There was a paleness upon the check of his wife. which was something more than the hue of disease : and the fond yet timid look. which she cast upon her husband, as he sat moody and silent by her bedside, was something so different from what had once been the case, that even the crone, whose heart had long been callous to all the softer motions, was touched by her altered appearance.

It was now June, but the little garden around the house was green with rank weeds, among which a scattered flower here and there struggling to lift its head Ihe woodbines and honeysuckles had been beaten down from their decaying frames, and lay neglected amidst the grass that was springing up in the walks, which had once wound through the beautiful shrubbery that had sheltered and surrounded the house.

If Frank at any time broke the sullen silence in her presence, money, expense, and ruin were the topics of his conversation ; and the oftener he sought this fatal closet, the more gloomy and morose he became.

The crone, of whom I have spoken, at length resolved to discover the cause of this strange change. She had heard the hints and surmises already referred to.— She had remarked his secret to a peculiar spot, and did not doubt if she could even peep within that secret and forbidden place, the mystery would be solved.

She determined to make the attempt, and having waited till she heard him de- scend to the course of the night to the inlor, she followed him with a silent and stealthy step. The clock from the neighboring church told the hour of one as she entered the parlor, and heard the door of the secret closet creak on its binges, Frank was just entering it, and the lamp which he held threw a dim light upon the deep darkness within, which was all she could distinguish, as the door was closed as soon as he had entered. She listened for a moment, and heard deep but distinct mutterings of voices in the closet, and then all was still again. She listened still longer, and again she heard the sound of hoarse and half-suppressed oaths and curses which seemed to come from no earthly voices, and soon all was again still. "She could endure it no longer, her blood chilled with terror, and she hastened back to the sick chamber of his wife, not doubting that she had heard the unearthly sounds of no human dialogue ; and she had heard too, mingled with this, the clink and ring of the money for which Frank had sold his soul, as he counted it over and deposited it in his secret hiding place. Her suspicions were confirmed beyond a doubt, when, in a few minutes,
he looked into the chamber where she was sitting by the side of the suffering patient, on his way to his own apartment, and she saw a glare and wildness in his blood shot eyes, which no one could mistake for- a human expression. Nor were her convictions weakened when she heard at intervals during the night, from the cham- ber to which he had retired, the uneasy tossing of his frame upon his bed and the half articulate terms of blasphemy which he muttered to himself or, to her excited imagination, addressed to the spirits that haunted his couch.

The terrors of that night were too great for her to endure a second time, she abruptly left his house in the morning.—

From that hour every one in the village studiously avoided Frank's presence ; and if he was seen at all, it was generally after dark upon some unfrequented path, ruminating in silence or muttering to himself. His demeanor became more and more reserved and morose, and even to his former friends he was moody and repulsive. He was no longer seen at church on the Sabbath, nor at his office on week days, and no one in the village doubted at last that a demon had possessed him.

About six months after the night of which I have spoken, I received a pressing note from Frank's wife to come to his house. I went, and I could not have imagined it possible that such a change could have taken place between what I then saw and what I have witnessed so few years before when I first visited there.

Frank was pacing the room with an unsteady step. His two eldest children stood shivering over an ill-supplied fire, near which his wife was sitting with a feeble and sickly infant upon her knee, and presented at once the picture of terror and despair. Her beauty had all faded, and a haggard paleness had taken its place.

Her husband had that morning received a letter which seemed to exasperate him into a paroxysm of rage, and, under this excitement he had offered her personal violence. Domestics she had long been destitute of, and her children were too much terrified for her to dare to remain any longer alone. Every thing that I saw wore the aspect of cheerless misery. The piano that I had once listened to was gone ; every ornament in the room had disappeared ; and a few broken chairs and a shattered table were all the furniture that remained. I sat down in silence and. my eye rested on the once fine Fratk Seymour. I had seen him for a year, and I shuddered at the change that I witnessed even within that period of time. I never before saw as much of the very fiend in human shape as his swollen visage and sunken eye presented. He muttered to himself half stifled curses upon his family and the world. and sometimes a ghastly smile would steal over his livid countenance, and this would be succeeded by a darker frown upon his hard-knut brow.

I felt that my situation was becoming awkward and almost painful, and was making an effort to break away from so revolting and heart-rending a scene when a loud quick knock was heard upon the door, and a stranger, without waiting to be bid, entered. Frank seemed to anticipate his business, and, in a sullen, dog- ged manner, demanded what he wanted?

"This will inform you," said the stranger, showing him a paper, "and by virtue of this I take whatever is in this house into my custody." Without waiting for any reply, he begun to make a memorandum of whatever the room contained. He then proceeded to other parts of the house, and in a little while returned to the parlor, apparently dissatisfied and disappointed.

"You have other property than this," said he, exhibiting a meagre list of a few nearly worthless articles. "You have other property than this, and I must have it."

"Nothing," said Frank, who had by this time recovered in some measure from the stupor and confusion into which the entrance of the stranger had thrown him.— "Nothing—I have not a cent for you, nor will I bear your insolence any longer— so, Leave my house, or," with an oath, "it shall cost you dear." "Mr. Seymour," said the stranger, coolly, but firmly, "I know and you know my duty too well to think I shall shrink from performing it."

"That door," pointing to the secret closet, "is the only place which I have not examined, and I must examine there also."

So.

Frank's rage became positively terrible ; he foamed at the mouth, and trembled in every limb ; and as the stranger advanced towards the closet, Frank, with a horrid oath, that no man living should ever open that door, sprung like a tiger upon him, and attempted to seize his throat. The stranger, who was a stout athletic man, recoiled so as evade thus attempt of Frank, and having with a single blow prostrated him upon the floor, rushed upon the door and burst it from its hinges. "As the door fell, the mysteries of that place were disclosed. The stranger cast one glance and shrunk back, for there stood the Demon, to whom Frank had sold himself, soul and body ;—there was the Fiend, who had consumed his substance, beggared his family, and more than widowed his wife. There stood the
On which like the ancient worshipper of Baal, he had immolated his children, and made himself an out-cast and a demon. Reader, you have anticipated me-or it is not any picture--there stood his half-drained BOTTLE. W.