isfied yet!" he cried in the same harsh tones, "then may I
perish to all eternity if I give you one fraction more."

As he was about to close the chest, Elinor, who knew that without a
necessary supply of money both her unborn infant and its avaricious
father would perish for want, slid her hand into the box, and dextrously
abstracted some of the broad gold pieces it contained. The coins, in
coming in contact with each other, emitted a slight ringing sound, which
arrested, trifling as it was, the ear of the sleeper.

"What! fingering the gold already?" he exclaimed, hastily slapping down
the lid of the strong box. "Could you not wait till I am dead?"

Then staggering back to his apartment, he was soon awake, and raving
under a fresh paroxysm of the fever. In his delirium he fancied himself
confined to the dreary gulf of eternal woe, and from this place of
torment he imagined that his brother could alone release him, and he
proffered to him, while under the influence of that strong agony, all
his hidden treasures if he would but intercede with Christ to save his
soul.

These visions of his diseased brain were so frequent and appalling, and
the near approach of death so dreadful to the guilty and despairing
wretch, that they produced at last a strong desire to see his brother,
that he might ask his forgiveness, and make some restitution of his
property to him before he died.

"Elinor," he said, "I must see Algernon. I cannot die until I have seen
him. But mark me, Elinor, you must not be present at our conference. You
must not see him."

With quivering lips, and a face paler than usual, his wife promised
obedience, and Grenard Pike was despatched to Norgood Hall to make known
to Algernon Hurdlestone his dying brother's request, and to call in,
once more, the aid of the village doctor.

As Elinor watched the grim messenger depart, she pressed her hands
tightly over her breast to hide from the quick eye of the miser the
violent agitation that convulsed her frame, as the recollection of
former days flashed upon her too retentive memory.

"Surely, surely," she thought, "he will never come. He has been too
deeply injured to attend to a verbal summons from his unnatural
brother."

Although strongly impressed that this would be the case, the desire of
once more beholding the love of her youth, though forbidden to speak to
him, or even to hear the sound of his voice, produced a state of
feverish excitement in her mind