When Hugh saw, however, that nothing except medical skill could save him, he forgot his crime and its consequences.  Stung to madness by his love of Felix, and his fears for his recovery, he mounted a horse, and had almost broken down the animal by over-exertion, ere he reached the village of B------, where the doctor he sought lived.

After an impetuous and violent knocking the door was opened, and a man pale and horror-struck entered, whom the doctor was inclined to receive rather as the patient than the messenger.  Yes! haggard, wild, yet weak and trembling, he staggered into the room, and, sinking on a seat, in a voice husky and hoarse said—­

“Docthor! oh, docthor, you won’t refuse to come!  It’s thrue he was my brother—­but I had not—­I had not—­oh—­no—­no—­I had it not in my heart to murdher him!  My brother is dyin’.  Oh, come, docthor! come to my brother, he’s dyin’, and ’twas I that struck, the blow.”

With a vehemence of grief that was pitiable, and an exhibition of the wildest gestures which characterize despair, he then uttered a cry that rang through the house.

“Oh, Felix agra, my brother, I’m your murdherer!  My sister and I are both wealthy—­he’s dyin’ docthor—­come, come.  Oh, agra Felix—­agra Felix!  To see you well—­to see you well—­the wealth of the world, if I had it, would go.  My life—­my life—­docthor!  Oh, that would be but little—­but it, too, would go—­I’d give it—­all we have, my sister and I, to our blanket—­to the shoes on our feet, and the coat and gown on our backs—­all—­all—­you’ll get—­if you can save our brother, that I struck down and murdhered!”

The doctor, a man of great skill and humanity, immediately ordered his horse, and mounting him, accompanied Hugh to the sick bed of his brother.  On arriving there, they found him worse; and never before, nor during his whole professional experience, had the doctor witnessed such a scene.  Hugh took his place behind Felix, who, by the doctor’s direction, was placed in a half-sitting, half-recumbent posture in the bed; his arms were placed distractedly about him, his breast was his pillow, and his cheek, wildly and with voracious affection, laid to his.  He was restrained from crying aloud, but his groans were enough to wrench the heart from which they proceeded to pieces.  Sympathy, in fact, was transferred from the sick boy to his brother; and perhaps more tears were shed by the lookers-on from pity towards Hugh than Felix.

But where was she, the bride and wife of a changeful day—­of a day, in which the extremities of happiness and misery met?  Oh, where but where she should and ought to be, at his bed-side, hoping against hope, soothing his wild ravings by her soft sweet voice; and when, in his delirium, the happy scene of the past day seemed reacted, then she knelt, ever ready to lead him, by her words and caresses, into a forgetfulness of his present pain.  In his desperate struggles he fancied they were tearing