startling that I was on the point of questioning the
girl. But I recollected myself, and waited in the hope that in her future
transits she might be more explicit. But one word more she did not utter,
and the jealous eye of old Pegtop was so constantly upon us that I
refrained.

There was vagueness and suggestion enough in the oracle to supply work for
many an hour of anxious conjecture, and many a horrible vigil by night. Was
I never to know peace at Bartram-Haugh?

Ten days of poor Milly's absence, and of my solitude, had already passed,
when my uncle sent for me to his room.

When old Wyat stood at the door, mumbling and snarling her message, my
heart died within me.

It was late--just that hour when dejected people feel their anxieties
most--when the cold grey of twilight has deepened to its darkest shade, and
before the cheerful candles are lighted, and the safe quiet of the night
sets in.

When I entered my uncle's sitting-room--though his window-shutters were
open and the wan streaks of sunset visible through them, like narrow lakes
in the chasms of the dark western clouds--a pair of candles were burning;
one stood upon the table by his desk, the other on the chimneypiece, before
which his tall, thin figure stooped. His hand leaned on the mantelpiece,
and the light from the candle just above his bowed head touched his silvery
hair. He was looking, as it seemed, into the subsiding embers of the fire,
and was a very statue of forsaken dejection and decay.

'Uncle!' I ventured to say, having stood for some time unperceived near his
table.

'Ah, yes, Maud, my dear child--my _dear_ child.'

He turned, and with the candle in his hand, smiling his silvery smile of
suffering on me. He walked more feebly and stiffly, I thought, than I had
ever seen him move before.

'Sit down, Maud--pray sit there.'

I took the chair he indicated.

'In my misery and my solitude, Maud, I have invoked you like a spirit, and
you appear.'

With his two hands leaning on the table, he looked across at me, in a
stooping attitude; he had not seated himself. I continued silent until it
should be his pleasure to question or address me.

At last he said, raising himself and looking upward, with a wild
adoration--his finger-tips elevated and glimmering in the faint mixed
light--

'No, I thank my Creator, I am not quite forsaken.'

Another silence, during which he looked steadfastly at me, and muttered, as
if thinking aloud--

'