The old man shrunk away in terror, and
stopped for a moment.

"The neighbour came pretty often—for he was
anxious about his wife—to see if I had found it,
and came often, too, when the major was sitting
in the parlour. 'What a fuss,' he said one day, in
a pet, 'about that wretched stuff. I never come
in here but you are harping on it. Give that
fellow something else, and have done with him.'

"'Well,' said I, 'major, it was very odd the
way it disappeared.'

"'Very odd?' he said, impatiently; 'in this
wild nest of confusion, it is a wonder you can
find anything.'

"My son had to go up to the major's wife
the next night, who was very ill indeed, in
something like catalepsy. 'A new shape, father,' he
said to me, when he came home. 'That woman
is running the round of every sickness in the
Clinical Medicine. I can make nothing of her.
There she is, now chattering and trembling, and
her spine going like a pendulum—'"

"What idle stuff this is," said Miss Manuel,
suddenly. "All foolish dreams! And this is your
story? You mislay a dusty old bottle, and you
talk of poisoning! A nightmare."

"Ah! I wish it were," said he, crooning the
words out sorrowfully. "But my son, a week
later, searching in a cupboard in her room
when the major had gone down, found the
very bottle (for it had a special make)—I wish
that had been a nightmare!"

Again Miss Manuel's eyes sparkled with interest.
She said, "You know something more."

"Ay," said he, "and that she herself told us.
That is her scared looks at him. Never for a
single moment—and this I remarked—did he
allow any one to be in the room with her without
being there himself. He was on guard
always. Once she half whispered to me, 'For
God's sake send me no more' (drugs, she meant),
'they are killing me;' and that moment he came
with some cooling drink for her.

"'No, no! no more,' she said, half rising up
in her bed. 'I will have nothing else. Ask
these doctors. I shall die soon; but not by——'

"'Hush, hush!' said the major, laying his
hand on her shoulder. 'This is for your good,
dear. You must take the things. Look! I
should ask nothing better myself.' And he
drank some of it with relish, and with his eyes
fixed upon her. She hung down her head and
took it silently. 'Ah,' he said, with a sigh, 'someway
we two have never understood each other
through our lives, and never will. It is too late,
I fear, now.' I believed in the major that night.

"Two nights after, Mrs. Carter died. They
came running for me (I was stronger then than
I am now) about eleven o'clock, and I went up.
She was shaking and chattering with her teeth
clenched, and the major and his son holding her
by the wrists. I never heard such shrieks and
such signs of agony. Her eyes were starting
out of her head. But we could do nothing.
Towards morning she got quiet, and by six, when
one of those spasms was coming on again, went
off with a shriek, and a sort of jump into the air.

"Two days after she was buried, the major
came to me in my parlour. He was in deep
grief, and wanted a certificate of her death, and
the cause of her death. It was a matter of form.
I was very silent, and, I suppose, suspicious.
'Why do you want this?' I said.

"'As a matter of form,' he said. 'I must
look to these things for the sake of my son. It
is odious to me at this time, when I should be at
the grave of my wife; but some one must look
to these things. We must have this, to get some
little property to which she is entitled.'

"' How?' I said. 'Through a will?'

"'O, that is no matter,' he said, shortly.
'All I want is the formal paper, just to satisfy
those insurance people.'

"I started up. 'O, it was an insurance,
then? Ah, Major Carter!'

"He stamped his foot. 'What do you mean?'
he said, turning on me. 'Take care! No tricks
of this sort. I warn you it will be dangerous
trying them with me.'

"'But I don't know,' I said (he had quite
scared me), 'what I am to sign. I know no
cause of death. It seems all mysterious.'

"'Then,' said he, promptly, 'try your post
mortem. Look for yourselves, both of you. I
give full permission. If you doubt your own
skill in these matters, get some one else that has
skill, and I will pay. What is it you are at?'

"My son here came in, and Major Carter
addressed him.

"'What is this humour your father has got
into?' he said, 'I can't follow him. He is
hesitating about giving the plain formal thing
always given. God knows I have trouble enough
without having old men's scruples to remove.
See to it, Watkyn, do. I am tired and sick.'

"I am weak, I am afraid, but my son spoke
with me, and reasoned with me, and showed me
what he thought was the folly of these scruples.
Later, too, when the major's cold eye fell upon
me, it quite scared me. That night he came back
when my son had just gone out, stayed exactly
a minute, but during that minute fixed that
dreadful eye upon me, and said, coldly and
distinctly, 'Mind what you are about, and
take a friendly hint. I have crushed many
as obscure, as an obscure country doctor. Take
care I don't stamp you under my foot. Be
wise,' and he threw the paper down on the table;
'make up your weak mind before the night is
over!'

"Well, I signed that night, and—and have
had a weight upon my conscience ever since. It
has put ten years to my sixty years, and has
made me decrepit and miserable. These stormy
nights, which come so often, make me tremble.
Listen! There it goes; and I often think, if I
was to be called away in one of these wild
hurricanes—what—-"

For more than an hour he sat and cowered
under Miss Manuel's eye, sometimes shrinking