tle Virginia would lie
unconscious, and restless, suffering failing strength and a slow
retraction of the head and neck, or on other occasions she would rest
in absolute peace, so that the disease, which depends so much upon
strength, would later show improvement. The cause of this case, he
believed, was either an abscess of the ear which had not received
sufficient treatment--probably owing to the fact that the child, though
abnormally sensitive, had always masked her sufferings under her quiet
and patience, or a blow on her head not thought of consequence at the
time it had happened.

Well, I happened to turn the notes over and, by George!--there was the
first signal to me. It was scrawled hastily in the characteristic
nervous hand,--a communication from poor Mac, a question but also a sort
of command,--like a message from the grave!

These were the words,--"What keeps her alive? What is behind the
Marburys' wall?"

They startled me. "Behind the wall?" I said to myself. "Behind the wall?
What wall?"

There were the scientific notes he had made! Then at the end a sane and
eminent doctor had written shocking gibberish. "What's behind the wall?"

"Come here," I called to that grim machine, the nurse.

She came, looked over my shoulder at my finger pointing at the words,
and her face filled with a dreadful expression of apprehension, all the
more uncouth because it sat upon a countenance habitually blank. She did
not answer. She pointed. I looked up. And then I knew that the wall in
question was that blank expanse of pale blue, that noncommittal wall
that rose beside the bed, at one moment flat, hard, and impenetrable, at
another with the limitless depths and color of a summer sky.

"Turn up that light a little," said I uneasily. "What has this wall to
do with us?"

"Nothing," said Miss Peters. "Nothing. I refuse to recognize such a
thing."

"Then, what did Dr. MacMechem see?" I asked.

"He saw nothing," she answered. "It is the child who knows that
something is beyond that wall. It is her delirium. There is no sense in
it. She believes some one is there. She has tried to explain. She puts
her hands upon that surface and smiles, or sometimes her face, as she
looks, will all screw up in pain. It has a strange effect upon her."

"How?" said I. "You are impressed, too, eh? Well, how does it show?
MacMechem was no fool. Speak."

The raw-boned woman shivered a little, I thought. "That's what causes me
to wonder