“I feared to hear it in London.  It left me, I should have told you, when we stepped ashore out of the steamboat.  I was afraid that the noise of the traffic in the streets might bring it back to me.  As you know, I passed a quiet night.  I had the hope that my imagination had deceived me—­that I was the victim of a delusion, as people say.  It is no delusion.  In the perfect tranquillity of this place the voice has come back to me.  While we were at table I heard it again—­behind me, in the library.  I heard it still, when the door was shut.  I ran up here to try if it would follow me into the open air.  It has followed me.  We may as well go down again into the hall.  I know now that there is no escaping from it.  My dear old home has become horrible to me.  Do you mind returning to London tomorrow?”

What I felt and feared in this miserable state of things matters little.  The one chance I could see for Romayne was to obtain the best medical advice.  I sincerely encouraged his idea of going back to London the next day.

We had sat together by the hall fire for about ten minutes, when he took out his handkerchief, and wiped away the perspiration from his forehead, drawing a deep breath of relief.  “It has gone!” he said faintly.

“When you hear the boy’s voice,” I asked, “do you hear it continuously?”

“No, at intervals; sometimes longer, sometimes shorter.”

“And thus far, it comes to you suddenly, and leaves you suddenly?”

“Yes.”

“Do my questions annoy you?”

“I make no complaint,” he said sadly.  “You can see for yourself—­I patiently suffer the punishment that I have deserved.”

I contradicted him at once.  “It is nothing of the sort!  It’s a nervous malady, which medical science can control and cure.  Wait till we get to London.”

This expression of opinion produced no effect on him.

“I have taken the life of a fellow-creature,” he said.  “I have closed the career of a young man who, but for me, might have lived long and happily and honorably.  Say what you may, I am of the race of Cain. He had the mark set on his brow.  I have my ordeal.  Delude yourself, if you like, with false hopes.  I can endure—­and hope for nothing.  Good-night.”

VIII.

EARLY the next morning, the good old butler came to me, in great perturbation, for a word of advice.

“Do come, sir, and look at the master!  I can’t find it in my heart to wake him.”

It was time to wake him, if we were to go to London that day.  I went into the bedroom.  Although I was no doctor, the restorative importance of that profound and quiet sleep impressed itself on me so strongly, that I took the responsibility of leaving him undisturbed.  The event proved that I had acted wisely.  He slept until noon.  There was no return of “the torment of the voice”—­as he called it, poor fellow.  We passed a quiet day, excepting one little interruption, which I am warned not to pass over without a word of record in this narrative.