my progress. Still, on the
whole, I felt that the body would not now be dislodged by the tides,
and that Winifred would at least be spared a misery compared with
which even her uncertainty about her father's fate would be bearable.
But how I longed to be up and with her!

Dr. Mivart, who attended me, a young medical man of much ability who
had finished his medical education in Paris, and had lately settled
at Raxton, came every day with great punctuality.

One day, however, he arrived three hours behind his usual time, and
seemed to think that some explanation was necessary.

'I must apologise,' said he, 'for my unpunctuality to-day, but the
fact is that, at the very moment of starting, I was delayed by one of
the most interesting--one of the most extraordinary cases that ever
came within my experience, even at the Salpetriere Hospital, where we
were familiar with the most marvellous cases of hysteria--a seizure
brought on by terror in which the subject's countenance mimics the
appearance of the terrible object that has caused it. A truly
wonderful case! I have just written to Marini about it.'

He seemed so much interested in his case, that he aroused a certain
interest in me, though at that time the word 'hysteria' conveyed an
impression to me of a very uncertain and misty kind.

'Where did it occur?' I asked.

'Here, in your own town,' said Mivart. 'A most extraordinary case. My
report will delight Marini, our great authority, as you no doubt are
aware, on catalepsy and cataleptic ecstasy.'

'Strange that I have heard nothing of it!' I said.

'Oh!' replied Mivart, 'it occurred only this morning. Some fishermen
passing below the old church were attracted, first by a shriek of a
peculiarly frightful and unearthly kind, and then by some unusual
appearance on the sands, at the spot where the last landslip took
place.'

My pulses stopped in a moment, and I clung to the back of my chair.

'What--did--the fishermen see?' I gasped.

'The men landed,' continued Mivart,--too much interested in the case
to observe my emotion,--'and there they found a dead body--the body
of the missing organist here, who had apparently fallen with the
landslip. The face was horribly distorted by terror, the skull
shattered, and around the neck was slung a valuable cross made of
precious stones. But the most interesting feature of the case is
this, that in front of the body, in a fit of a remarkable kind,
squatted his daughter--you