ung man
gratefully responded; and then, with a lingering clasp of the hand, he
bade her good-night and ran lightly down the steps.

With a rapidly beating heart and throbbing pulses, Mona softly let
herself in with a latch-key, turned out the hall gas, which had been left
burning dimly for her, and started to mount the stairs, when she espied
a gleam of light shining beneath the library door.

"Why! Uncle Walter has not gone to bed yet! Can it be that he is sitting
up for me?" she murmured. "I will go and tell him that I have come in,
and get my good-night kiss."

She turned back and went quietly down the hall, and tapped lightly at the
door. Receiving no response, she opened it, and passed into the room.

The gas was burning brightly, and Mr. Dinsmore was sitting before his
desk, but reclining in his chair, his head thrown back against the soft,
bright head-rest, the work of Mona's skillful fingers.

"He has fallen asleep," said the fair girl, as she went to his side and
laid her hand gently upon his shoulder.

"Uncle Walter," she called, "why did you sit up for me? Wake up now
and go to bed, or you will be having one of your dreadful headaches
to-morrow."

But the man did not make or show any signs of having heard her.

He was breathing heavily, and Mona now noticed that his face was
unnaturally flushed, and that the veins upon his temples were knotted
and swollen.

A startled look swept over her face, and she grew white with a sudden
fear.

"Uncle Walter!" she cried out, sharply, and trying to arouse him; "speak
to me! Oh! there is something dreadful the matter with him; he is ill--he
is unconscious!"

With a wild cry and sob of fear and anguish, she turned and sped with
flying feet from the room.

A moment later she was knocking vigorously at the door of the
serving-man's room, begging him to "get up at once and go for Doctor
Hammond, for Mr. Dinsmore was very ill."

Having aroused James, she called the other servants, and then flew back
to her idolized uncle.

There was no change in him; he sat and breathed just the same.
Instinctively feeling that something ought to be done immediately for his
relief, with trembling fingers she loosened his neck-tie, unbuttoned his
collar, then drenching her handkerchief with water from an ice pitcher,
she began to bathe his flushed and knotted forehead.

She imagined that this afforded him some relief, and that his breathing
was not quite so labored, but his c