en effort to match his friend's
cheerfulness, "you have been trying the doctor's medicine, why shouldn't
I?"

Allan was delighted. "This is something like a change for the better,"
he said; "Midwinter is himself again. Hark! there are the birds. Hail,
smiling morn! smiling morn!" He sang the words of the glee in his old,
cheerful voice, and clapped Midwinter on the shoulder in his old, hearty
way. "How did you manage to clear your head of those confounded megrims?
Do you know you were quite alarming about something happening to one or
other of us before we were out of this ship?"

"Sheer nonsense!" returned Midwinter, contemptuously. "I don't think my
head has ever been quite right since that fever; I've got a bee in my
bonnet, as they say in the North. Let's talk of something else. About
those people you have let the cottage to? I wonder whether the agent's
account of Major Milroy's family is to be depended on? There might be
another lady in the household besides his wife and his daughter."

"Oho!" cried Allan, "_you're_ beginning to think of nymphs among the
trees, and flirtations in the fruit-garden, are you? Another lady, eh?
Suppose the major's family circle won't supply another? We shall have to
spin that half-crown again, and toss up for which is to have the first
chance with Miss Milroy."

For once Midwinter spoke as lightly and carelessly as Allan himself.
"No, no," he said, "the major's landlord has the first claim to the
notice of the major's daughter. I'll retire into the background, and
wait for the next lady who makes her appearance at Thorpe Ambrose."

"Very good. I'll have an address to the women of Norfolk posted in the
park to that effect," said Allan. "Are you particular to a shade about
size or complexion? What's your favorite age?"

Midwinter trifled with his own superstition, as a man trifles with the
loaded gun that may kill him, or with the savage animal that may maim
him for life. He mentioned the age (as he had reckoned it himself) of
the woman in the black gown and the red Paisley shawl.

"Five-and-thirty," he said.

As the words passed his lips, his factitious spirits deserted him. He
left his seat, impenetrably deaf to all Allan's efforts at rallying him
on his extraordinary answer, and resumed his restless pacing of the deck
in dead silence. Once more the haunting thought which had gone to and
fro with him in the hour of darkness went to and fro with him now in the
hour of daylight