“‘Give it to me,’ I said; and I snatched at the cup.  Catching it from her, I looked into it.  The draught had been taken; the sediment only lay dried upon it.

“’You think so, Chloe?  How could it have been?  You say Doctor Percival gave it to her?’

“She said that ’Mr. Abraham had been in to see her a little while,—­only a few moments.  Something was the matter with him.  Miss Mary talked, just a few words; what they were she did not hear,—­she was in the next room,—­only, when he went away, she heard her say, “Don’t do it; you may be wrong, and then you’ll be sorry as long as you live”; and then Mr. Abraham shut the door heavy-like and was gone.  Afterwards Doctor Percival came up,—­said Miss Mary must sleep, she had more fever; asked her so many kind questions, and was just going down to go to the office for something to give her, when he met Master McKey coming in.  I heard my master ask him to go for it.  And I doesn’t know anything more, Miss Lettie.  I came to tell you.’

“I asked her ’if she had told any one else? if any one had seen the cup?’

“She said, ‘No’; and I made her promise me that she would never mention it, never speak of it to any living soul.

“She promised, and she has kept her promise faithfully to this day.”

I thought, at this pause in the story, of Chloe’s hiding chloroform from me.

“I had myself seen Bernard McKey go out to the office that night.  Had he given poison to Mary Percival?  And with the question the hot answer came, ‘Never!—­he did not do it!’

“Chloe went, leaving the cup with me.

“I knew that I must see Bernard.  How?  The household were absorbed in Abraham.  His condition perilled his reason.  Doctor Percival came over every hour to see him, and I was sure that his hair whitened from time to time.  It was terrible to hear Abraham declaring that he had killed Mary,—­that he might have granted her request.  And as often as his eyes fell upon me, his words changed to, ’It was for you that I did it,—­for my sister!’ And whilst all sorrowed and watched him, I sought my opportunity.  ‘It would never come to me,’ I thought, ‘I must go to it’; and under cover of looking upon the face of Mary, I went out to seek Bernard.

“We met before I reached the house; we should have passed in silence, had I not spoken.  It was the same hour as that in which we had come from the sands the night before.  What a horrible lifetime had intervened!  I said that ‘I had some words for him.’  He stood still in the air that throbbed in waves over me.  He was speechlessly calm just then.

“‘I expected no words after my judgment,’ at length he said,—­for I knew not how to open my terrible theme; ’will you tell me on what evidence you judge?’

“What a trifle then seemed any merely human love in the presence of Death!  I was almost angry that he should once think of it.

“’It is something of more importance than the human affection with which you play,’ I said.  ’It is a life, the life of Mary Percival, that last night went out,—­and how?  Was it by this cup?’—­and I handed the cup to him.