within hail astern
of them. Absorbed for the moment by the new idea, he passed Allan
hastily, after barely noticing that he still lay asleep. One step more
would have brought him to the taffrail, when that step was suspended by
a sound behind him, a sound like a faint groan. He turned, and looked at
the sleeper on the deck. He knelt softly, and looked closer.

"It has come!" he whispered to himself. "Not to _me_--but to _him_."

It had come, in the bright freshness of the morning; it had come, in the
mystery and terror of a Dream. The face which Midwinter had last seen
in perfect repose was now the distorted face of a suffering man. The
perspiration stood thick on Allan's forehead, and matted his curling
hair. His partially opened eyes showed nothing but the white of the
eyeball gleaming blindly. His outstretched hands scratched and struggled
on the deck. From moment to moment he moaned and muttered helplessly;
but the words that escaped him were lost in the grinding and gnashing of
his teeth. There he lay--so near in the body to the friend who bent
over him; so far away in the spirit, that the two might have been in
different worlds--there he lay, with the morning sunshine on his face,
in the torture of his dream.

One question, and one only, rose in the mind of the man who was looking
at him. What had the fatality which had imprisoned him in the wreck
decreed that he should see?

Had the treachery of Sleep opened the gates of the grave to that one of
the two Armadales whom the other had kept in ignorance of the truth? Was
the murder of the father revealing itself to the son--there, on the very
spot where the crime had been committed--in the vision of a dream?

With that question overshadowing all else in his mind, the son of the
homicide knelt on the deck, and looked at the son of the man whom his
father's hand had slain.

The conflict between the sleeping body and the waking mind was
strengthening every moment. The dreamer's helpless groaning for
deliverance grew louder; his hands raised themselves, and clutched at
the empty air. Struggling with the all-mastering dread that still held
him, Midwinter laid his hand gently on Allan's forehead. Light as the
touch was, there were mysterious sympathies in the dreaming man that
answered it. His groaning ceased, and his hands dropped slowly. There
was an instant of suspense and Midwinter looked closer. His breath just
fluttered over the sleeper's face. Before the next