touch is dull. Take the pen, and write what
I tell you."

Sarah, instead of obeying, hid her face in
the bed-cover, and wept bitterly.

"You have been with me ever since my
marriage," Mrs. Treverton went on. "You
have been my friend more than my servant.
Do you refuse my last request? You do!
Fool! look up and listen to me. On your
peril, refuse to take the pen. Write, or I
shall not rest in my grave. Write, or as
true as there is a Heaven above us, I will
come to you from the other world!"

Sarah started to her feet with a faint
scream.

"You make my flesh creep!" she
whispered, fixing her eyes on her mistress's face
with a stare of superstitious horror. At the
same instant, the overdose of the
stimulating medicine began to affect Mrs. Treverton's
brain. She rolled her head restlessly
from side to side of the pillow—repeated
vacantly a few lines from one of the old play-
books which had been removed from her
bed—and suddenly held out the pen to the
servant, with a theatrical wave of the hand,
and a glance upward at an imaginary gallery
of spectators.

"Write!" she cried, with a hollow, awful
mimicry of her old stage voice. "Write!"
And the weak hand was waved again with a
forlorn, feeble imitation of the old stage
gesture.

Closing her fingers mechanically on the
pen that was thrust between them, Sarah,
with her eyes still expressing the
superstitious terror which her mistress's words
had aroused, waited for the next command.
Some minutes elapsed before Mrs. Treverton
spoke again. She still retained her senses
sufficiently to be vaguely conscious of the
effect which the medicine was producing on
  her, and to be desirous of combating its
further progress before it succeeded in utterly
confusing her ideas. She asked first for the
smelling-bottle, next for some Eau de
Cologne. This last, poured on to her
handkerchief, and applied to her forehead, seemed
to prove successful in partially clearing her
faculties again. Her eyes recovered their
steady look of intelligence; and, when she
again addressed her maid, reiterating the
word "Write," she was able to enforce the
direction by beginning immediately to dictate
in quiet, deliberate, determined tones. Sarah's
tears fell fast; her lips murmured fragments
of sentences in which entreaties, expressions
of penitence, and exclamations of fear
were all strangely mingled together; but she
wrote on submissively, in wavering lines,
until she had nearly filled the two first sides
of the note paper. Then Mrs. Treverton
paused, looked the writing over, and, taking
the pen, signed her name at the end of it.
With this effort, her powers of resistance to
the exciting effect of the medicine, seemed to
fail her again. The deep flush began to tinge
her cheeks once more, and she spoke
hurriedly and unsteadily when she handed the
pen back to her maid.

"Sign!" she cried, beating her hand feebly
on the bed-clothes. "Sign Sarah Leeson,
witness. No!—write accomplice. Take your
share of it; I won't have it shifted on me.
Sign, I insist on it! Sign as I tell you."

Sarah obeyed; and Mrs. Treverton, taking
the paper from her, pointed to it solemnly,
with a return of the same sad stage gesture
which had escaped her a little while back.

"You will give this to your master," she
said, "when I am dead; and you will answer
any questions he puts to you as truly as if
you were before the judgment-seat."

Clasping her hands fast together, Sarah
regarded her mistress, for the first time, with
steady eyes, and spoke to her for the first
time in steady tones.

"If I only knew that I was fit to die," she
said, "O, how gladly I would change places
with you!"

"Promise me that you will give the paper
to your master," repeated Mrs. Treverton.
"Promise—no! I won't trust your promise:
I'll have your oath. Get the Bible—the Bible
the clergyman used when he was here this
morning. Get it, or I shall not rest in my
grave. Get it, or I will come to you
from the other world."

The mistress laughed, as she reiterated
that threat. The maid shuddered, as she
obeyed the command which it was designed
to impress on her.

"Yes, yes—the Bible the clergyman used,"
continued Mrs. Treverton, vacantly, after the
book had been produced. "The clergyman—
a good, weak man—I frightened him, Sarah.
He said, 'Are you at peace with all the
world?' and I said, 'All but one.' You
know who."

"The Captain's brother. O, don't die at
enmity with anybody. Don't die at enmity
even with him," pleaded Sarah.

The clergyman told me that," said Mrs.
Treverton, her eyes beginning now to wander
childishly round the room, her tones growing
suddenly lower and more confused. "'You
must forgive him,' the clergyman said. And
l said, 'No. I forgive all the world, but not
my husband's brother.' The clergyman got
up from the bedside, frightened, Sarah. He
talked about praying for me, and coming
back. Will he come back?"

"Yes, yes," answered Sarah. "He is a
good man—he will come back—and O!
tell him that you forgive the Captain's
brother! Those vile words he spoke of you,
when you were married, will come home to
him some day. Forgive him—forgive him
before you die!"

Saying those words, she attempted to
remove the Bible softly out of her mistress's
sight. The action attracted Mrs. Treverton's
attention, and roused her sinking faculties
into observation of present things.