rength under the unwonted excitement.

Just then the old-fashioned clock on the stairs struck five. Mrs.
Manning started up, holding the goblet in her hand.

"It is time for your medicine," she said.

"As you please," answered her husband wearily, sinking back on his
pillow. "My wife insists on giving me every drop of my potions with
her own hands. I shall not trouble her much longer, and I doubt if it
is any use for her to trouble me now."

"I shall give you everything in this glass after this," she said.

"In the Venetian glass?" asked Larry.

"Yes," she said, turning on him fiercely; "why not?"

"Do you think the doctor is trying to poison me?" asked her husband.

"No, I do not think the doctor is trying to poison you," she repeated
mechanically as she moved toward a little sideboard in a corner of the
room. "But I shall give you all your medicines in this hereafter."

She stood at the little sideboard, with her back toward them, and she
mingled the contents of various phials in the Venetian goblet. Then
she turned to cross the room to her husband. As she walked with the
glass in her hand there was a rift in the clouds high over the other
side of the river, and the rays of the setting sun thrust themselves
through the window and lighted up the glory of her hair and showed the
strange gleam in her staring eyes. Another step, and the red rays fell
on the Venetian glass, and it burned and glowed, and the green
serpents twined about its ruby stem seemed to twist and crawl with
malignant life, while their scorching eyes shot fire. Another step,
and she stood by the bedside. As John Manning reached out his hand for
the goblet, a tremor passed through her, her fingers clinched the
fragile stem, and the glass fell on the floor and was shattered to
shivers as its fellow had been shattered three centuries ago and more.
She still stared steadily before her; then her lips parted, and she
said, "The glass broke--the glass broke--then the tale is true!" And
with one hysteric shriek she fell forward amid the fragments of the
Venetian goblet, unconscious thereafter of all things.

End of Project Gutenberg's Stories by American Authors, Volume 3, by Various

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORIES--AMERICAN AUTHORS, VOL 3 ***

***** This file should be named 31095.txt or 31095.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/0/9/31095/

Pro