else. Even my mother's arrival could avail little, should she find him in a state of incipient irritation. Most luckily, however, his bath had invigorated him. He showed himself quite equal to a further dive into the columns of the Times, and once I saw him enwrapped in its folds I made my escape, and had soon pencilled a hasty line to my mother. I had brought no ink, but I had a small supply of stationery with me, and the note was next enclosed in an envelope and ready for delivery to Mr. Locke. Then I stole again into the garden, listened breathlessly for wheels. without, and the first moment I heard them advancing along the road, I was at the little wooden gate ready to open it.

When I appeared with my tiny missive, and Mr. Locke drew up to take it, he turned a very earnest glance on me. He seemed instinctively to divine that something was wrong, and his manner took a different tone under the impression.

"This shall be delivered without delay," he said, placing the letter in his breast pocket. "I will call at Crystal Lodge on my way back. Do not fear but Mrs. Wynham shall have it immediately. You are not looking well," he added suddenly. "I only wish I could give a better account of you at home. I trust nothing has happened? that your uncle is not ill ?"

"No, not exactly," I murmured. "But I am a little anxious about him. I have asked my mother to come I hope she will do so."

to me.

"I know she will do so," was his reply; and then, as I bid him a hurried good-bye, I felt that his eyes were fixed upon me still, and it was only when I had turned away that he gave sudden rein to the pony, and drove rapidly from the spot.

I stood for a moment alone in the garden, listening to the retreating sound of the wheels. It was almost in a dream I heard it, such misty trouble lay pressingly upon my heart. The morning was chill, grave even, with a sort of solemn sadness in its still air, its pale horizon, and the withering tints of fallen leaves and flowers.

The sudden reaction, after recent haste and excitement, had caused me a faint bewildered feeling, and I could scarcely wonder at Mr. Locke's questioning gaze. If I might judge by my sensations, there was coldness, if not pallor in my cheeks. Startled so early from sleep, I had not had an instant free from anxiety since, and even now I shrank alike from re-entering the house or deserting the post of watchfulness which was rightfully my place.

My cousin had promised me to wait, but if, drawn by a quick impulse, by the tone of his father's voice, he should be tempted to any rash action, my care might at this very time be missed and needed. While the thought grew pressing, I was roused by a kind of cry.

Then I saw the dark figure of Willis on the halldoor steps. He was waving his arms, beckoning to

me wildly. My heart stood still, but for a second. In the next I rushed towards the house, and as I gained the threshold, fear met me as a visible presence. I felt and knew that the dreaded crisis had come. It was too late now to avert it.

THERE was a voice in the library, a voice which thrilled me as some sight of agony. It was a man's tone, broken by weeping. The door of the room was partly open, but I could not have passed the threshold had not Willis drawn me almost forcibly onwards. When I entered all grew clouded before me in a mist of terrors. I discerned the figure of Uncle George fallen on the ground, and his son kneeling beside him. From his lips the sharp cry had broken: "My father! my father! Oh! have I killed my father ?"

If there can be such a thing as atonement by suffering for deeds of sin, surely in that moment he bore the weight of a dread punishment, he won the right to a last forgiveness.

But uncle's form was motionless. Could he no longer hear or hearken? Was it death, in truth, which had come? Impelled by a swift fear, I sprang nearer, but Willis interposed. He pointed almost. roughly to the broken-hearted son.

"Take him away!" he exclaimed. "Quick, quick! Don't let him speak or touch him. He is killing him. as it is."

The man had seized a bottle from the mantelpiece as he spoke some restorative, no doubt, used in these attacks and as he turned towards his master, I caught at my cousin's arm. Willis was right, I felt. If life still lingered, it was not those pleading accents that could recall my uncle to it. He would never open his eyes upon a face he shrank rigidly, resolutely from.

"Send Martha for a doctor," Willis called after me, as I drew the hapless son from the room, and finding the woman in the hall, I despatched her instantly.

Alone with my cousin, I learned in a few words the cause of the catastrophe. He had been left so long to himself that he had grown nervously anxious, and had come out into the passage to look for me. At that very moment Willis was in the library, removing the breakfast things, and the door being fully open,