as it seemed, in black and white,
venerable, bloodless, fiery-eyed, with its strange look of power and an
expression so bewildering. Was it derision, or anguish, or cruelty, or
patience?

He said something in his clear, gentle, but cold voice, and, taking both
my hands, led me affectionately to a chair near his own. He was a
miserable invalid, he told me, after speaking a little eulogy of his
brother and examining me closely, respecting his illness and its
symptoms. At last, remarking that I must be fatigued, he rose and kissed
me with a solemn tenderness, and, placing his hand on a large Bible,
bade me "Remember that book; in it lives my only hope. Consult it, my
beloved niece, day and night as the only oracle."

"I'm awful afraid of the governor, I am," said Cousin Milly, when we had
left him. "I was in a qualm. When he spies me a-napping maybe he don't
fetch me a prod with his pencil-case over the head."

But Milly was a pretty and a clever creature in spite of her uncouth
dialect, and I liked her very much. We spent much time taking long
country rambles and exploring the old house, many of whose rooms were
closed and shuttered. Of my uncle we saw little. He was "queerish,"
Milly said, and I learnt afterwards he took much laudanum.

My other cousin, Dudley, I did not meet till later. To my horror, I
beheld in him one of the party of ruffians who had terrified me so much
the day of the attempted abduction at Knowl; but he stoutly denied ever
having been there with an air so confident that I began to think I must
be the dupe of a chance resemblance. My uncle viewed him with a strange,
paternal affection. But dear Cousin Monica had written asking Milly and
me to go to her, and we had some of the pleasantest and happiest days of
our lives at her house of Elverston, for there Milly met her good little
curate, the Rev. Sprigge Biddlepen, and Lord Ilbury.

Uncle Silas was terribly ill when we returned to Bartram-Haugh, the
result of an overdose of opium; but for the doctor's aid he would have
died. Remembering how desperate Lady Knollys had told me his monetary
position was, a new and dreadful suspicion began to haunt me.

"Had he attempted to poison himself?"

I remember I was left alone with him while his attendant fetched a fresh
candle. A small thick Bible lay on the mantle-shelf. I turned over its
leaves, and lighted on two or three odd-looking papers--promissory
notes, I believe--when Uncle Silas, dressed in a