a painful slumber I awoke in about an hour with red-heat at my
brain and with a sickening dread at my heart. 'It is fever,' thought
I; 'I am going to be ill; and what is there to do in the morning at
the ebb of the tide before Winifred can go upon the sands? I ought
not to have come home at all,' I said. 'Suppose illness were to
seize me and prevent my getting there?' The dreadful thought alone
paralysed me quite. Under it I lay as under a nightmare. I scarcely
dared try to get out of bed, lest I should find my fears
well-grounded. At last, cautiously and timorously, I put one leg out
of bed and then the other, till at length I felt the little ridges of
the carpet; but my knees gave way, my head swam, my stomach heaved
with a deadly nausea, and I fell like a log on the floor.

As I lay there I knew that I was indeed in the grasp of fever. I
nearly went crazed from terror at the thought that in a few minutes I
should perhaps lapse into unconsciousness and be unable to
rise--unable to reach the sands in the morning and seek for Wynne's
body--unable even to send some one there as a substitute to perform
that task. But then whom was I to send? whom could I entrust with
such a commission? I was under a pledge to my dead father never to
divulge the secret of the amulet save to my mother and uncle. And
besides, if I would effectually save Winifred from the harm I
dreaded, the hideous sacrilege committed by her father must be kept a
secret from servants and townspeople. Whom then could I send on this
errand? At the present moment, there were but four people in the
world who knew that the cross and casket had been placed in the
coffin--my mother, my uncle, myself, and now, alas! Winifred. My
mother was the one person who could do what I wanted done. Her
sagacity I knew; her courage I knew. But how could I--how dare I,
broach such a matter to her? I felt it would be sheer madness to do
so, and yet, in my dire strait, in my terror at the illness I was
fighting with, I did it, as I am going to tell.

By this time the noise of my fall had brought up the servants. They
lifted me into bed and proposed fetching our medical man. But I
forbade them to do so, and said, 'I want to speak to my mother.'

'She is herself unwell, sir,' said the man to whom I spoke.

'I know,' I replied. 'Call her maid and tell her that my business
with my mother is very important, or I would not have dreamed of
disturbing her; but see her I must.'

The