a poison, no doubt, which habit will enable you to partake of, I may say, in considerable quantities, without fatal consequences, but still a poison; and to exhibit a poison so, is, I need scarcely tell you, to trifle with death.  He has been so threatened, and for a time he changes his haphazard mode of dealing with it, and then returns; he may escape—­of course, that is possible—­but he may any day overdo the thing.  I don’t think the present crisis will result seriously.  I am very glad, independently of the honour of making your acquaintance, Miss Ruthyn, that you and your cousin have returned; for, however zealous, I fear the servants are deficient in intelligence; and as in the event of a recurrence of the symptoms—­which, however, is not probable—­I would beg to inform you of their nature, and how exactly best to deal with them.’

So upon these points he delivered us a pompous little lecture, and begged that either Milly or I would remain in the room with the patient until his return at two or three o’clock in the morning; a reappearance of the coma ‘might be very bad indeed.’

Of course Milly and I did as we were directed.  We sat by the fire, scarcely daring to whisper.  Uncle Silas, about whom a new and dreadful suspicion began to haunt me, lay still and motionless as if he were actually dead.

‘Had he attempted to poison himself?’

If he believed his position to be as desperate as Lady Knollys had described it, was this, after all, improbable?  There were strange wild theories, I had been told, mixed up in his religion.

Sometimes, at an hour’s interval, a sign of life would come—­a moan from that tall sheeted figure in the bed—­a moan and a pattering of the lips.  Was it prayer—­what was it? who could guess what thoughts were passing behind that white-fillited forehead?

I had peeped at him:  a white cloth steeped in vinegar and water was folded round his head; his great eyes were closed, so were his marble lips; his figure straight, thin, and long, dressed in a white dressing-gown, looked like a corpse ‘laid out’ in the bed; his gaunt bandaged arm lay outside the sheet that covered his body.

With this awful image of death we kept our vigil, until poor Milly grew so sleepy that old Wyat proposed that she should take her place and watch with me.

Little as I liked the crone with the high-cauled cap, she would, at all events, keep awake, which Milly could not.  And so at one o’clock this new arrangement began.

‘Mr. Dudley Ruthyn is not at home?’ I whispered to old Wyat.

‘He went away wi’ himself yesternight, to Cloperton, Miss, to see the wrestling; it was to come off this morning.’

‘Was he sent for?’

‘Not he.’

‘And why not?’

‘He would na’ leave the sport for this, I’m thinking,’ and the old woman grinned uglily.

‘When is he to return?’

‘When he wants money.’