l realized what he had done. It was
the glass intended for his host which he had caught up and carried into
the other room--the glass which he had been told contained a drug.
Of what folly he had been guilty, and how tame would be any effort at
excuse!

Attempting none, he rose and with a hurried glance at Mr. Upjohn who
flushed in sympathy at his distress, he crossed to the door he had
lately closed upon Mr. Spielhagen. But feeling his shoulder touched
as his hand pressed the knob, he turned to meet the eye of Mr. Van
Broecklyn fixed upon him with an expression which utterly confounded
him.

"Where are you going?" that gentleman asked.

The questioning tone, the severe look, expressive at once of displeasure
and astonishment, were most disconcerting, but Mr. Cornell managed to
stammer forth:

"Mr. Spielhagen is in here consulting his thesis. When your man brought
in the cordial, I was awkward enough to catch up your glass and carry it
in to. Mr. Spielhagen. He drank it and I--I am anxious to see if it did
him any harm."

As he uttered the last word he felt Mr. Van Broecklyn's hand slip from
his shoulder, but no word accompanied the action, nor did his host make
the least move to follow him into the room.

This was a matter of great regret to him later, as it left him for a
moment out of the range of every eye, during which he says he simply
stood in a state of shock at seeing Mr. Spielhagen still sitting there,
manuscript in hand, but with head fallen forward and eyes closed; dead,
asleep or--he hardly knew what; the sight so paralysed him.

Whether or not this was the exact truth and the whole truth, Mr. Cornell
certainly looked very unlike himself as he stepped back into Mr. Van
Broecklyn's presence; and he was only partially reassured when that
gentleman protested that there was no real harm in the drug, and that
Mr. Spielhagen would be all right if left to wake naturally and without
shock. However, as his present attitude was one of great discomfort,
they decided to carry him back and lay him on the library lounge. But
before doing this, Mr. Upjohn drew from his flaccid grasp, the precious
manuscript, and carrying it into the larger room placed it on a remote
table, where it remained undisturbed till Mr. Spielhagen, suddenly
coming to himself at the end of some fifteen minutes, missed the sheets
from his hand, and bounding up, crossed the room to repossess himself of
them.

His face, as he lifted them up