in a
quick, fierce whisper through his clinched teeth. "Wake up! Wake up,
there! Murder!"

There is an interval of silence. He moves one lean arm slowly until it
rests over his throat; he shudders, and turns on his straw; he raises his
arm from his throat, and feebly stretches it out; his hand clutches at the
straw on the side toward which he has turned; he seems to fancy that he is
grasping at the edge of something. I see his lips begin to move again; I
step softly into the stable; my wife follows me, with her hand fast
clasped in mine. We both bend over him. He is talking once more in his
sleep--strange talk, mad talk, this time.

"Light gray eyes" (we hear him say), "and a droop in the left
eyelid--flaxen hair, with a gold-yellow streak in it--all right, mother!
fair, white arms with a down on them--little, lady's hand, with a reddish
look round the fingernails--the knife--the cursed knife--first on one
side, then on the other--aha, you she-devil! where is the knife?"

He stops and grows restless on a sudden. We see him writhing on the straw.
He throws up both his hands and gasps hysterically for breath. His eyes
open suddenly. For a moment they look at nothing, with a vacant glitter in
them--then they close again in deeper sleep. Is he dreaming still? Yes;
but the dream seems to have taken a new course. When he speaks next, the
tone is altered; the words are few--sadly and imploringly repeated over
and over again. "Say you love me! I am so fond of _you_. Say you love me!
say you love me!" He sinks into deeper and deeper sleep, faintly repeating
those words. They die away on his lips. He speaks no more.

By this time Mrs. Fairbank has got over her terror; she is devoured by
curiosity now. The miserable creature on the straw has appealed to the
imaginative side of her character. Her illimitable appetite for romance
hungers and thirsts for more. She shakes me impatiently by the arm.

"Do you hear? There is a woman at the bottom of it, Percy! There is love
and murder in it, Percy! Where are the people of the inn? Go into the
yard, and call to them again."

My wife belongs, on her mother's side, to the South of France. The South
of France breeds fine women with hot tempers. I say no more. Married men
will understand my position. Single men may need to be told that there are
occasions when we must not only love and honor--we must also obey--our
wives.

I turn to the door to obey _my_ wife, and find myself confronte