looking at him
in dumb amazement. It was Philippa who cried out and ran forward to
help him, then stopped midway, her hands clutched together at her
throat, her eyes dilating with a horror that seemed to paralyze her so
that she was unable to move to his assistance. The shocked silence of
the moment was broken by Fenn's voice, trailing on and on, in totally
unintelligible words.

Henry Roberts, staring open-mouthed, suddenly spoke: "The VOICE!" he
said. But Philippa, as though she were breaking some invisible bond
that held her, groaning even with the effort of it, said, in a whisper:
"No. Not that. He is dying. Don't you see? That's what it is. He is
dying."

Her father, shocked from his ecstasy, ran to John Fenn's side, trying
to lift him and calling upon him to say what was the matter.

"He is going to die," said Philippa, monotonously.

Henry Roberts, aghast, calling loudly to old Hannah, ran to the kitchen
and brought back a great bowl of hot water. "Drink it!" he said. "Drink
it, I tell ye! I believe you're poisoned!"

And while he and Hannah bent over the unconscious young man, Philippa
seemed to come out of her trance; slowly, with upraised hands, and head
bent upon her breast, she stepped backward, backward, out of the room,
out of the house. On the doorstep, in the darkness, she paused and
listened for several minutes to certain dreadful sounds in the house.
Then, suddenly, a passion of purpose swept the daze of horror away.

"HE SHALL NOT DIE," she said.

She flung her skirt across her arm that her feet might not be hampered,
and fled down the road toward Old Chester. It was very dark. At first
her eyes, still blurred with the lamplight, could not distinguish the
footpath, and she stumbled over the grassy border into the wheel-ruts;
then, feeling the loose dust under her feet, she ran and ran and ran.
The blood began to sing in her ears; once her throat seemed to close so
that she could not breathe, and for a moment she had to walk,--but her
hands, holding up her skirts, trembled with terror at the delay. The
road was very dark under the sycamore-trees; twice she tripped and fell
into the brambles at one side or against a gravelly bank on the other.
But stumbling somehow to her feet, again she ran and ran and ran. The
night was very still; she could hear her breath tearing her throat;
once she felt something hot and salty in her mouth; it was then she had
to stop and walk for a little space--she