late."

"Ay, sir, and long since: of a disease past your curing."

"God help us! I hope not," said he; then broke out violently: "She is
innocent, Paschal; innocent as a child!"

"Innocent!" cried I, in a voice which showed how little I believed.

"Paschal," he went on, "you are my servant, but my friend also, I hope.
Nay, nay, I know. I swear to you, then, these things do but happen in
her sleep. In her waking senses she is mine, as one day she shall be
mine wholly. But at night, when her will is dissolved in sleep, the
evil spirit wakes and goes questing after its master."

"Mahound?" I stammered, quaking.

"Be it Satan himself," said he, very low and resolute, "I will win her
from him, though my own soul be the ransom."

"Dear my Master," I began, and would have implored him on my knees; but
he pointed to the door. "I will win her," he repeated. "What you have
seen to-night happens more rarely now. Moreover, the summer is
beginning--"

He paused: yet I had gathered his meaning. "There will be less peril
for the ships for a while," said I.

Said he: "To _them_ she intends no harm. It is for her master the light
waves. Paschal, I am an unhappy man!" He flung a hand to his forehead,
but recovering himself peered at me under the shadow of it. "If you
could watch--often--as you have done to-night--you might protect others
from seeing--"

The wisdom of this at least I saw, and gave him my promise readily.
Upon this understanding (for no more could be had) I withdrew me.

The next day, therefore, I moved my bed to a turret-chamber on the angle
of the south-eastern wall whence I could keep my lady's window in view.
I was never a man to need much sleep: but if, through the year which
followed, the apparition escaped once or twice without my cognisance, I
dare take oath this was the extent of it. It appeared more rarely, as
my Master had promised: and in the end (I think) scarce above once a
month. In form it never varied from the cresseted globe of flame I had
first seen, and always it took the path across the fields towards Cuddan
Point. No sound went with it, or announced its going or return: and
while it was absent, my lady's chamber would be utterly dark and silent.
My custom was not to follow it (which I had proved to be useless), but
to let myself out and patrol the walls, satisfying myself that no
watchers lurked about the castle. I understood now that Pengersick was
reported throughout the