rched that the sanest speech would
have been difficult to understand. Robert was stretched on his bed in
the inner room, the door of which stood ajar, that a fresh draught from
his open window might carry the fever-fumes away through mine. I could
just see a long, dark figure, with the lighter outline of a face, and,
having little else to do just then, I fell to thinking of this curious
contraband, who evidently prized his freedom highly, yet seemed in no
haste to enjoy it. Doctor Franck had offered to send him on to safer
quarters, but he had said, "No, thank yer, Sir, not yet," and then had
gone away to fall into one of those black moods of his, which began to
disturb me, because I had no power to lighten them. As I sat listening
to the clocks from the steeples all about us, I amused myself with
planning Robert's future, as I often did my own, and had dealt out to
him a generous hand of trumps wherewith to play this game of life which
hitherto had gone so cruelly against him, when a harsh, choked voice
called,--

"Lucy!"

It was the captain, and some new terror seemed to have gifted him with
momentary strength.

"Yes, here's Lucy," I answered, hoping that by following the fancy I
might quiet him,--for his face was damp with the clammy moisture, and
his frame shaken with the nervous tremor that so often precedes death.
His dull eye fixed upon me, dilating with a bewildered look of
incredulity and wrath, till he broke out fiercely,--

"That's a lie! she's dead,--and so's Bob, damn him!"

Finding speech a failure, I began to sing the quiet tune that had often
soothed delirium like this; but hardly had the line,

"See gentle patience smile on pain,"

passed my lips, when he clutched me by the wrist, whispering like one in
mortal fear,--

"Hush! she used to sing that way to Bob, but she never would to me. I
swore I'd whip the Devil out of her, and I did; but you know before she
cut her throat she said she'd haunt me, and there she is!"

He pointed behind me with an aspect of such pale dismay, that I
involuntarily glanced over my shoulder and started as if I had seen a
veritable ghost; for, peering from the gloom of that inner room, I saw a
shadowy face, with dark hair all about it, and a glimpse of scarlet at
the throat. An instant showed me that it was only Robert leaning from
his bed's-foot, wrapped in a gray army-blanket, with his red shirt just
visible above it, and his long hair disordered by sleep. But