He sat down to the table and fell to work with an appetite.  Old Sally waited upon him, and gazed at his performance with admiring eyes.

“Won’t your young lady want something, Guy?” his mother asked, presently.

“Let her fast a little,” replied the doctor, coolly; “it will take some of the unnecessary heat out of her blood.  I’ll fetch her her breakfast to-morrow.”

Mrs. Oleander upon this retired at once, and the doctor, after smoking old Peter’s pipe in the chimney-corner, retired also.

Then the old man hobbled upstairs to bed, and Sally, after raking out the fire, and seeing to the secure fastening of doors and windows, took up her tallow candle and went after him.

Outside the door of the poor little captive she paused, listening in a sort of breathless awe.  But no sound came forth:  the tumult of wind, and sea, and rain had the inky night all to themselves.

“She’s asleep, I reckon,” said old Sally, creeping away.  “Poor little, pretty creeter!”

But Mollie was not asleep.  When the door had closed after Dr. Oleander, she had dropped on the floor like a stone, and had never stirred since.

She was not in a faint.  She saw the ruddy blaze of the fire, as the tongues of flame leaped like red serpents up the chimney; she heard the wild howling of the night wind, the ceaseless dash and fall of the rain, the indescribable roar of the raging sea; she heard the trees creak and toss and groan; she heard the rats scampering overhead; she heard the dismal moaning of the old house itself rocking in the gale.

She saw, she heard, but as one who neither sees nor hears; like one in a drugged, unnatural stupor.  She could not think; an iron hand seemed to have clutched her heart, a dreadful despair to have taken possession of her.  She had made a horrible, irreparable mistake; she was body and soul in the power of the man she hated most on earth.  She was his wife!—­she could get no further than that.

The stormy night wore on; midnight came and the elemental uproar was at its height.  Still she lay there all in a heap, suffering in a dulled, miserable way that was worse than sharpest pain.  She lay there stunned, overwhelmed, not caring if she ever rose again.

And so morning found her—­when morning lifted a dull and leaden eye over the stormy sea.  It came gloomy and gray, rain falling still, wind whispering pitifully, and a sky of lead frowning down upon the drenched, dank earth and tossing, angry ocean.

All in a heap, as she had fallen, Mollie lay, her head resting on a chair, her poor golden ringlets tossed in a wild, disheveled veil, fast asleep.  Pitifully, as sleep will come to the young, be their troubles ever so heavy, sleep had sealed those beaming blue eyes, “not used to tears at night instead of slumber.”  Tears, Mollie had shed none—­the blow that had fallen had left her far beyond that.

Nine o’clock struck; there was a tap at the prison door.  Dr. Oleander, thinking his patient’s fast had lasted long enough, was coming with a bountiful breakfast.  There was no reply to the tap.