er gusts, and the wail and hiss of
the rows of fir-trees bordering the garden, came between, and allowed
him a moment's incredulity as to its being a human voice. Such a cry
will often haunt the moors and wolds from above at nightfall. The voice
hied on, sank, seemed swallowed; it rose, as if above water, in a
hush of wind and trees. The trees bowed their heads rageing, the voice
drowned; once more to rise, chattering thrice rapidly, in a high-pitched
key, thin, shrill, weird, interminable, like winds through a crazy
chamber-door at midnight.

The voice of a broomstick-witch in the clouds could not be thinner and
stranger: Lord Romfrey had some such thought.

Dr. Gannet was the bearer of Miss Denham's excuses to Lord Romfrey for
the delay in begging him to enter the house: in the confusion of the
household his lordship's card had been laid on the table below, and she
was in the sick-room.

'Is my nephew a dead man?' said the earl.

The doctor weighed his reply. 'He lives. Whether he will, after the
exhaustion of this prolonged fit of raving, I don't dare to predict.
In the course of my experience I have never known anything like it. He
lives: there's the miracle, but he lives.'

'On brandy?'

'That would soon have sped him.'

'Ha. You have everything here that you want?'

'Everything.'

'He's in your hands, Gannet.'

The earl was conducted to a sitting-room, where Dr. Gannet left him for
a while.

Mindful that he was under the roof of his enemy, he remained standing,
observing nothing.

The voice overheard was off at a prodigious rate, like the far sound of
a yell ringing on and on.

The earl unconsciously sought a refuge from it by turning the leaves of
a book upon the table, which was a complete edition of Harry Denham's
Poems, with a preface by a man named Lydiard; and really, to read the
preface one would suppose that these poets were the princes of the
earth. Lord Romfrey closed the volume. It was exquisitely bound,
and presented to Miss Denham by the Mr. Lydiard. 'The works of your
illustrious father,' was written on the title-page. These writers deal
queerly with their words of praise of one another. There is no law to
restrain them. Perhaps it is the consolation they take for the poor
devil's life they lead!

A lady addressing him familiarly, invited him to go upstairs.

He thanked her. At the foot of the stairs he turned; he had recognized
Cecilia Halkett.

Seeing her there was more stran