The tears gathered in her eyes; she could not speak at first.  Presently, “Why, Bernard, my dear friend, my brother, it cannot be that you are in danger?  Tell me what it is, and, if I can share it with you, or counsel you in any way, it will only be paying back the great debt I owe you.  No, no,—­it can’t be true,—­you are tired and worried, and your spirits have got depressed.  I know what that is;—­I was sure, one winter, that I should die before spring; but I lived to see the dandelions and buttercups go to seed.  Come, tell me it was nothing but your imagination.”

She felt a tear upon her cheek, but would not turn her face away from him; it was the tear of a sister.

“I am really in earnest, Helen,” he said.  “I don’t know that there is the least reason in the world for these fancies.  If they all go off and nothing comes of them, you may laugh at me, if you like.  But if there should be any occasion, remember my requests.  You don’t believe in presentiments, do you?”

“Oh, don’t ask-me, I beg you,” Helen answered.  “I have had a good many frights for every one real misfortune I have suffered.  Sometimes I have thought I was warned beforehand of coming trouble, just as many people are of changes in the weather, by some unaccountable feeling,—­but not often, and I don’t like to talk about such things.  I wouldn’t think about these fancies of yours.  I don’t believe you have exercised enough;—­don’t you think it’s confinement in the school has made you nervous?”

“Perhaps it has; but it happens that I have thought more of exercise lately, and have taken regular evening walks, besides playing my old gymnastic tricks every day.”

They talked on many subjects, but through all he said Helen perceived a pervading tone of sadness, and an expression as of a dreamy foreboding of unknown evil.  They parted at the usual hour, and went to their several rooms.  The sadness of Mr. Bernard had sunk into the heart of Helen, and she mingled many tears with her prayers that evening, earnestly entreating that he might be comforted in his days of trial and protected in his hour of danger.

Mr. Bernard stayed in his room a short time before setting out for his evening walk.  His eye fell upon the Bible his mother had given him when he left home, and he opened it in the New Testament at a venture.  It happened that the first words he read were these,—­“Lest, coming suddenly, he find you sleeping.”  In the state of mind in which he was at the moment, the text startled him.  It was like a supernatural warning.  He was not going to expose himself to any particular danger this evening; a walk in a quiet village was as free from risk as Helen Darley or his own mother could ask; yet he had an unaccountable feeling of apprehension, without any definite object.  At this moment he remembered the old Doctor’s counsel, which he had sometimes neglected, and, blushing at the feeling which led him to do it, he took the pistol his suspicious old friend had forced upon him, which he had put away loaded, and, thrusting it into his pocket, set out upon his walk.