en. Are you
ready?"

"I am."

"Dear sir, Let nothing prevent your coming to me to-morrow," he
dictated; "I want to make my will. It is important that affairs be not
left in confusion. Yours truly. Give me the pen," he went on, in the
same breath. "I can sign as well as ever. Now go you yourself and put
this in the post. I do not trust that woman--they all stop and gossip,
and I want this to go by the next despatch."

Katherine, always thankful to be in the air, went readily enough. She
was distressed to find how the nervous uneasiness of yesterday was
growing on her. The perpetual companionship of the grim old skeleton,
her uncle, was making her morbid, she thought; she must ask leave to go
and spend a day at home to see how her mother was getting on, to refresh
herself by a game of romps with the children. Why, she felt absolutely
growing old!

When she re-entered the house she found, much to her satisfaction, that
the doctor was with Mr. Liddell; and after laying aside her out-door
dress, she went to the parlor.

"I have been advising Mr. Liddell to try the effect of a few glasses of
champagne," said the former, who was looking rather grave, Katherine
thought. "But as there is none in his cellar, he objects. Now you must
help me to persuade him. I am going on to a patient in Regent's Park,
and shall pass a very respectable wine-merchant's on my way; so I shall
just take the law into my own hands and order a couple of bottles for
you. Consider it medicine. It is wonderful how much more generally
champagne is used than when you and I were young, my dear sir!" etc.,
etc., he went on, with professional cheerfulness. But Mr. Liddell did
not heed him much.

"He is very weak. The action of the heart is extremely feeble," said the
doctor, when Katherine followed him to the door. "Try and make him take
the champagne."

Another day dragged through; then Katherine, rather worn with the
constant involuntary sense of watching which had strained her nerves all
day, slept soundly and dreamlessly. She woke early next morning, and was
soon dressed. Mrs. Knapp reported Mr. Liddell to be still slumbering.

"But law, miss, he have had a bad night--the worst yet, I think. He was
dreaming and tossing from side to side, and then he would scream out
words I couldn't understand. I made him take some wine between two and
three, but I do not think he knew me a bit. I have had a dreadful night
of it."

Katherine expressed her sympat