e halted when the wand dropped from my
hand. But--but--beware! Ha! you will serve me yet, and through her! They
said so that night, though you heard them not. They said it!" Here his
face became death-like; he pressed his hand on his heart, and shrieked
out, "Away! away! or you are my murderer!"

I retreated to the other end of the room, turning the wand from him, and
when I gained the door, looked back; his convulsions had ceased, but he
seemed locked in a profound swoon.

I left the room,--the house,--paused by Waby; he was still sleeping.
"Awake!" I said, and touched him with the wand. He started up at once,
rubbed his eyes, began stammering out excuses. I checked them, and bade
him follow me. I took the way up the open ground towards which Margrave
had pointed the wand, and there, motionless, beside a gnarled fantastic
thorn-tree, stood Lilian. Her arms were folded across her breast; her
face, seen by the moonlight, looked so innocent and so infantine, that I
needed no other evidence to tell me how unconscious she was of the peril
to which her steps had been drawn. I took her gently by the hand. "Come
with me," I said in a whisper, and she obeyed me silently, and with a
placid smile.

Rough though the way, she seemed unconscious of fatigue. I placed her
arm in mine, but she did not lean on it. We got back to the town. I
obtained there an old chaise and a pair of horses. At morning Lilian was
under her mother's roof. About the noon of that day fever seized her;
she became rapidly worse, and, to all appearance, in imminent danger.
Delirium set in; I watched beside her night and day, supported by an
inward conviction of her recovery, but tortured by the sight of her
sufferings. On the third day a change for the better became visible; her
sleep was calm, her breathing regular.

Shortly afterwards she woke out of danger. Her eyes fell at once on me,
with all their old ineffable tender sweetness.

"Oh, Allen, beloved, have I not been very ill? But I am almost well
now. Do not weep; I shall live for you,--for your sake." And she bent
forward, drawing my hand from my streaming eyes, and kissed me with a
child's guileless kiss on my burning forehead.

(1) And yet, even if we entirely omit the consideration of the soul,
that immaterial and immortal principle which is for a time united to his
body, and view him only in his merely animal character, man is still
the most excellent of animals.--Dr. Kidd, On the Adaptation o