ilbert
asked.

"O yes, sir; off and on for the first week he was quite hisself at times;
but for the last three days he hasn't known any one, and has talked and
jabbered a deal, and has been dreadful restless."

"Does the doctor call it a dangerous case?"

"Well, sir, not to deceive you, he ast me if Mr. Saltram had any friends
as I could send for; and I says no, not to my knowledge; 'for,' says Mr.
Mew, 'if he have any relations or friends near at hand, they ought to be
told that he's in a bad way;' and only this morning he said as how he
should like to call in a physician, for the case was a bad one."

"I see. There is danger evidently," Gilbert said gravely. "I will wait
and hear what the doctor says. He will come again to-day, I suppose?"

"Yes, sir; he's sure to come in the evening."

"Good; I will stay till the evening. I should like you to go round
immediately to this Mr. Mew's house, and ask for the address of some
skilled nurse, and then go on, in a cab if necessary, and fetch her."

"I could do that, sir, of course,--not but what I feel myself capable of
nursing the poor dear gentleman."

"You can't nurse him night and day, my good woman. Do what I tell you,
and bring back a professional nurse as soon as you can. If Mr. Mew should
be out, his people are likely to know the address of such a person."

He gave the woman some silver, and despatched her; and then, being alone,
sat down quietly in the sick-room to think out the situation.

Yes, there was no longer any doubt; that piteous appeal to Marian had
settled the question. John Saltram, the friend whom he had loved, was the
traitor. John Saltram had stolen his promised wife, had come between him
and his fair happy future, and had kept the secret of his guilt in a
dastardly spirit that made the act fifty times blacker than it would have
seemed otherwise.

Sitting in the dreary silence of that sick chamber, a silence broken only
by the painful sound of the sleeper's difficult breathing, many things
came back to his mind; circumstances trivial enough in themselves, but
invested with a grave significance when contemplated by the light of
today's revelation.

He remembered those happy autumn afternoons at Lidford; those long,
drowsy, idle days in which John Saltram had given himself up so entirely
to the pleasure of the moment, with surely something more than mere
sympathy with his friend's happiness. He remembered that last long
evening at the cotta