had expressed when Mrs. Treverton had
threatened to claim her servant's obedience
from the other world.

"Something moves," she gasped to herself,
in a breathless whisper. " Something moves
in the room besides me!"

The curtain waved slowly to and fro for
the second time. Still fixedly looking at it
over her shoulder, she crept along the wall
to the door.

"Do you come to me already? " she said,
her eyes riveted on the curtain while her
hand groped over the lock for the key.
"Before the grave is dug? Before the coffin
is made ? Before the body is cold?"

She opened the door and glided into the
passage; stopped there for a moment, and
looked back into the room.

"Rest! " she said. " Rest- he shall have
the letter."

The staircase-lamp guided her out of the
passage. Descending hurriedly, as if she
feared to give herself time to think, she
reached Captain Treverton's study, on the
ground-floor, in a minute or two. The door
was wide open, and the room was empty.

After reflecting a little, she lighted one of
the chamber-candles standing on the
hall-table, at the lamp in the study, and ascended
the stairs again to her master's bedroom.
After repeatedly knocking at the door and
obtaining no answer, she ventured to go in.
The bed had not been disturbed, the candles
had not been lit- to all appearance, the room
had not even been entered during the
night.

There was but one other place to seek him
in- the chamber in which his wife lay dead.
Could she summon the courage to give him
the letter there ? She hesitated a little-
then whispered, " I must! I must! " The
direction she now compelled herself to take,
led her a little way down the stairs again.
She descended very slowly this time, holding
cautiously by the bannisters, and pausing to
take breath almost at every step. The door
of what had been Mrs. Treverton's
bed-room was opened, when she ventured to
knock at it, by the nurse, who inquired
roughly and suspiciously, what she wanted
there.

"I want to speak to my master."

"Look for him somewhere else. He
was here half an hour ago. He is gone
now."

"Do you know where he has gone?"

"No. I don't pry into other people's
goings and comings. I mind my own
business."

With that discourteous answer, the nurse
closed the door again. Just as Sarah turned
away from it, she looked towards the inner
end of the passage. The door of the nursery
was situated there. It was ajar, and a dim
gleam of candle-light was flickering through
it.

She went in immediately, and saw that the

candle-light came from an inner room,
usually occupied, as she well knew, by
the nursery-maid and by the only child of
the house of Treverton; a little girl, named
Rosamond, aged, at that time, nearly five
years.

"Can he be there?- in that room, of all the
rooms in the house!"

Quickly as the thought arose in her mind,
Sarah raised the letter (which she had
hitherto carried in her hand) to the bosom of
her dress, and hid it for the second time,
exactly as she had hidden it on leaving her
mistress's bedside.

She then stole across the nursery on
tiptoe towards the inner room. The entrance to
it, to please some caprice of the child's, had
been arched, and framed with trellis-work,
gaily-coloured, so as to resemble the entrance
to a summer-house. Two pretty chintz
curtains, hanging inside the trellis-work, formed
the only barrier between the day-room and
the bed-room. One of these was looped up,
and towards the opening thus made, Sarah
now advanced, after cautiously leaving her
candle in the passage outside.

The first object that attracted her
attention in the child's bed-room, was the
figure of the nursemaid, leaning back fast
asleep in an easy chair by the window.
Venturing, after this discovery, to look more
boldly into the room, she next saw her
master sitting with his back towards her, by
the side of the child's crib. Little Rosamond
was awake, and was standing up in bed with
her arms round her father's neck. One of
her hands held over his shoulder the doll
that she had taken to bed with her, the
other was twined gently in his hair. The
child had been crying bitterly, and had
now exhausted herself, so that she was only
moaning a little from time to time, with her
head laid wearily on her father's bosom.

The tears stood thick in Sarah's eyes
as they looked on her master and on the
little hands that lay round his neck. She
lingered by the raised curtain, heedless of
the risk she ran, from moment to moment,
of being discovered and questioned- lingered
until she heard Captain Treverton say
soothingly to the child:

"Hush, Rosie, dear! hush, my own love!
Don't cry any more for poor mamma. Think
of poor papa, and try to comfort him."

Simple as the words were, quietly and
tenderly as they were spoken, they seemed
instantly to deprive Sarah Leeson of all
power of self-control. Reckless whether she
was heard or not, she turned and ran into the
passage as if she had been flying for her life.
Passing the candle she had left there, without
so much as a look at it, she made for the
stairs, and descended them with headlong
rapidity to the kitchen-floor. There, one of
the servants who had been sitting up met her,
and, with a face of astonishment and alarm,
asked what was the matter.