“Are you going?”—­and this time there was plaintive moaning in the accents.

“You must take him in, too,” my spirit whispered; and I acted the “I will” that formed in the mental court where my soul sat enthroned,—­my own judge.

“Oh, no, I am not going away,” I said; “I am come to stay with you, until some one else comes.”

A certain resignment of opposition seemed to be effected.  I knew it would be so,—­it is in all such natures,—­and he seemed intent upon making atonement for his imaginary wrong, since I would stay.

“Mary, I didn’t mean to kill you,” he said; “I wouldn’t have destroyed your young life; oh!  I wouldn’t;—­but I did!  I did!”

“You make some strange mistake; you ought not to talk,” I urged, surprised at this second time being called Mary.

“Yes, I guess ’twas a mistake,—­you’re right, all a mistake,—­I didn’t mean to kill you; but I did him, though.  Oh!  I wanted to destroy him,—­he hadn’t any pity, he wouldn’t yield.  But it’s you, Mary, you oughtn’t to hear me say such things of him.”

“I am not Mary, I am Miss Percival; and you may tell me.”

“I beg pardon, I had no right to call you Mary; but it is there, now, on your tomb-stone in the old church-yard,—­Mary Percival,—­there isn’t any Miss there.  Do they call you Miss Percival in heaven?”—­and he began to sing, deep, stirring songs of rhythmic melody, that catch up individual existences and bear them to congregated continents, where mountains sing and seas respond, amid the encore of starry spheres.

O Music! if we could but divine thee, dear divinity, thou mightst be less divine! then let us be content to be divinized in thee!—­and I was.  I let him sing, knowing that it was in delirium; and for the moment my wonder ceased concerning Miss Axtell’s love for Herbert.

This while, Jeffy stood speechless, transfused into melody.  Whence came this love of Africans for harmonious measure?  Oh, I remember:  the scroll of song whereon were written the accents of the joyed morning-stars, when they grew jubilant that earth stood create, was let fall by an angel upon Afric’s soil.  No one of the children of the land was found of wisdom sufficient to read the hieroglyphs; therefore the sacred roll was divided among the souls in the nation:  unto each was given one note from the divine whole.

“Jeffy must have received a semi-breve as his portion,” I thought, for he was rapt in ecstasy.

“Oh, sing again!” he said, unconsciously, when, exhausted, the invalid reached the shore of Silence,—­where he did not long linger, for he changed his song to lament that he could not reach his ship, that would sail before he could recover; and he made an effort to rise.  He fell back, fainting.

It seemed a great blessing that at this moment the housekeeper introduced the person Doctor Percival had sent.

That night, and for many after, it seemed, my father looked extremely anxious.  I did not see the patient again until the eventful twenty-fifth of March was past.