ellow," he said; "probably she
is dead or married. But I do not understand."

"Don't waste time, Leonard," Tom answered, rousing himself from his
lethargy. "Listen to me. I am going fast. You know dying men see
far--sometimes. I dreamed it, or I read it in your face. I tell
you--_you_ will die at Outram. Stay here a while after I am dead. Stay a
while, Leonard!"

He sank back exhausted, and at that moment a gust of wind, fiercer than
any which had gone before, leapt down the mountain gorges, howling with
all the voices of the storm. It caught the frail hut and shook it. A
cobra hidden in the thick thatch awoke from its lethargy and fell with
a soft thud to the floor not a foot from the face of the dying man--then
erected itself and hissed aloud with flickering tongue and head swollen
by rage. Leonard started back and seized a crowbar which stood near, but
before he could strike, the reptile sank down and, drawing its shining
shape across his brother's forehead, once more vanished into the thatch.

His eyes did not so much as close, though Leonard saw a momentary
reflection of the bright scales in the dilated pupils and shivered at
this added terror, shivered as though his own flesh had shrunk beneath
the touch of those deadly coils. It was horrible that the snake should
creep across his brother's face, it was still more horrible that his
brother, yet living, should not understand the horror. It caused him to
remember our invisible companion, that ancient enemy of mankind of whom
the reptile is an accepted type; it made him think of that long sleep
which the touch of such as this has no power to stir.

Ah! now he was going--it was impossible to mistake that change, the last
quick quiver of the blood, followed by an ashen pallor, and the sob
of the breath slowly lessening into silence. So the day had died last
night, with a little purpling of the sky--a little sobbing of the
wind--then ashen nothingness and silence. But the silence was broken,
the night had grown alive indeed--and with a fearful life. Hark! how the
storm yelled! those blasts told of torment, that rain beat like tears.
What if his brother----He did not dare to follow the thought home.

Hark! how the storm yelled!--the very hut wrenched at its strong
supports as though the hands of a hundred savage foes were dragging it.
It lifted--by heaven it was gone!--gone, crashing down the rocks on the
last hurricane blast of the tempest, and there above them lowe