find the child. If you
ever expect to speak to me again, to touch me, you must bring her back.
For where she goes, I go: you hear me! Where she has gone, look for me."

She struck out past him again with a quick feminine throwing-out of her
arms from the elbows down, as if freeing herself from some imaginary
bonds, and, dashing into her chamber, slammed and locked the door. Col.
Starbottle, although no coward, stood in superstitious fear of an angry
woman, and, recoiling as she swept by, lost his unsteady foothold,
and rolled helplessly on the sofa. Here, after one or two unsuccessful
attempts to regain his foothold, he remained, uttering from time to time
profane but not entirely coherent or intelligible protests, until at
last he succumbed to the exhausting quality of his emotions, and the
narcotic quantity of his potations.

Meantime, within, Mrs. Starbottle was excitedly gathering her valuables,
and packing her trunk, even as she had done once before in the course
of this remarkable history. Perhaps some recollection of this was in her
mind; for she stopped to lean her burning cheeks upon her hand, as if
she saw again the figure of the child standing in the doorway, and heard
once more a childish voice asking, "Is it mamma?" But the epithet now
stung her to the quick and with a quick, passionate gesture she dashed
it away with a tear that had gathered in her eye. And then it chanced,
that, in turning over some clothes, she came upon the child's slipper
with a broken sandal-string. She uttered a great cry here,--the first
she had uttered,--and caught it to her breast, kissing it passionately
again and again, and rocking from side to side with a motion peculiar
to her sex. And then she took it to the window, the better to see it
through her now streaming eyes. Here she was taken with a sudden fit of
coughing that she could not stifle with the handkerchief she put to her
feverish lips. And then she suddenly grew very faint. The window
seemed to recede before her, the floor to sink beneath her feet; and,
staggering to the bed, she fell prone upon it with the sandal and
handkerchief pressed to her breast. Her face was quite pale, the orbit
of her eyes dark; and there was a spot upon her lip, another on her
handkerchief, and still another on the white counterpane of the bed.

The wind had risen, rattling the window-sashes, and swaying the white
curtains in a ghostly way. Later, a gray fog stole softly over the
roofs, s