e of life and death to Winnie and me.

'She may, unless the seizures become too frequent for the strength of
the constitution. In that event, of course, she would succumb. She is
entirely harmless, let me tell you.'

He told me that she was at the cottage, where some good soul was
seeing after her.

'I'll get up,' I said, trying to rise.

'Get up!' said the doctor, astonished; 'why do you want to get up?
You are not strong enough to sit in a chair yet.'

This was, alas! but too true, and my great object now was to conceal
my weakness; for I determined to get out as soon as my legs could
carry me, though I should drop down dead on the road.

I gathered from the doctor and the servants that the sacrilege had
now become publicly known, and had caused much excitement. Wynne had
evidently been slightly intoxicated when he committed it, and had
taken no care to conceal the proofs that the grave had been tampered
with. At the inquest the amulet had been identified and claimed by my
mother.

It was some days before I got out, and then I went at once to the
cottage. It was a lovely evening as I walked down Wilderness Road. It
was not till I reached the little garden-gate that I began fully to
feel how weak my illness had left me. The gate was half open, and I
looked over into the garden, which was already forlorn and deserted.
Some instinct told me she was not there. The little flower-beds
looked shaggy, grass-grown, and uncared for. In the centre, among the
geraniums, phlox-beds, and French marigolds, sat a dirty-white hen,
clucking and calling a brood of dirty-white chickens. The
box-bordered gravelled paths, which Wynne, in spite of his
drunkenness, used to keep always so neat, were covered with leaves,
shaken by the wind from the trees surrounding the garden. One of the
dark green shutters was unfastened, and stood out at right-angles
from the wall--a token of desertion. On the diamond panes of the
upper windows, round which the long tendrils of grape-vines were
drooping, the gorgeous sunset was reflected, making the glass gleam
as though a hundred little fires were playing behind it. When I
reached the door, the paint of which seemed far more cracked with the
sun than it had looked a few weeks before, I found on knocking that
the cottage was empty. I did not linger, but went at once into the
town to inquire about her.

In place of giving me the information I was panting for, the whole
town came cackling round me