ore came out. I had I just strength left to tell him what
was the matter, and what I wanted and then a fresh attack came on, with
sickness, and overcome by vertigo I fell to the ground.

I have but an indistinct idea what happened after that; until I found
myself inside the house, clinging to the man's arm. He pointed to a
box-bed in one corner of the room (which was, or seemed to my sick eyes,
gloomy and darksome in the extreme), and would have had me lie down in
it. But something inside me revolted against the bed, and despite the
force he used, I broke away, and threw myself on a heap of straw which I
saw in another corner.

'Is not the bed good enough for you?' he grumbled.

I strove to tell him it was not that.

'It should be good enough to die on,' he continued brutally. 'There's
five have died on that bed, I'd have you know! My wife one, and my son
another, and my daughter another; and then my son again, and a daughter
again. Five! Ay, five in that bed!'

Brooding in the gloom of the chimney-corner, where he was busied about a
black pot, he continued to mutter and glance at me askance; but after a
while I swooned away with pain.

When I opened my eyes again the room was darker. The man still sat where
I had last seen him, but a noise, the same, perhaps, which had roused
me, drew him as I looked to the unglazed window. A voice outside, the
tones of which I seemed to know, inquired if he had seen me; and so
carried away was I by the excitement of the moment that I rose on my
elbow to hear the answer. But the man was staunch. I heard him deny all
knowledge of me, and presently the sound of retreating hoofs and the
echo of voices dying in the distance assured me I was left.

Then, at that instant, a doubt of the man on whose compassion I had
thrown myself entered my mind. Plague-stricken, hopeless as I was, it
chilled me to the very heart; staying in a moment the feeble tears I was
about to shed, and curing even the vertigo, which forced me to clutch at
the straw on which I lay. Whether the thought arose from a sickly sense
of my own impotence, or was based on the fellow's morose air and the
stealthy glances he continued to cast at me, I am as unable to say as I
am to decide whether it was well-founded, or the fruit of my own fancy.
Possibly the gloom of the room and the man's surly words inclined me
to suspicion; possibly his secret thoughts portrayed themselves in his
hang-dog visage. Afterwards it appeared