's hearty laughter rang out loud and long
through the stillness of the night.

"Turning the lock of the door, is he?" said Allan, as soon as his
merriment left him breath enough to speak. "That's a devilish unhandsome
action, Master Midwinter, on the part of your ghost. The least I can do,
after that, is to let mine out of the cabin, and give him the run of the
ship."

With no more than a momentary exertion of his superior strength, he
freed himself easily from Midwinter's hold. "Below there!" he called
out, gayly, as he laid his strong hand on the crazy lock, and tore open
the cabin door. "Ghost of Allan Armadale, come on deck!" In his terrible
ignorance of the truth, he put his head into the doorway and looked
down, laughing, at the place where his murdered father had died. "Pah!"
he exclaimed, stepping back suddenly, with a shudder of disgust. "The
air is foul already; and the cabin is full of water."

It was true. The sunken rocks on which the vessel lay wrecked had burst
their way through her lower timbers astern, and the water had welled up
through the rifted wood. Here, where the deed had been done, the fatal
parallel between past and present was complete. What the cabin had been
in the time of the fathers, that the cabin was now in the time of the
sons.

Allan pushed the door to again with his foot, a little surprised at
the sudden silence which appeared to have fallen on his friend from the
moment when he had laid his hand on the cabin lock. When he turned to
look, the reason of the silence was instantly revealed. Midwinter had
dropped on the deck. He lay senseless before the cabin door; his face
turned up, white and still, to the moonlight, like the face of a dead
man.

In a moment Allan was at his side. He looked uselessly round the lonely
limits of the wreck, as he lifted Midwinter's head on his knee, for a
chance of help, where all chance was ruthlessly cut off. "What am I to
do?" he said to himself, in the first impulse of alarm. "Not a drop
of water near, but the foul water in the cabin." A sudden recollection
crossed his memory, the florid color rushed back over his face, and he
drew from his pocket a wicker-covered flask. "God bless the doctor for
giving me this before we sailed!" he broke out, fervently, as he poured
down Midwinter's throat some drops of the raw whisky which the flask
contained. The stimulant acted instantly on the sensitive system of the
swooning man. He sighed faintly, and slow