short interval, but just as they hoped that sleep might come, the
fierce struggle with oppression brought back the old habits of violent
language, and then the distressed endeavour to check himself, and the
clutch at the clergyman's aid. Ben Yolland saw, standing in the room,
a great rough wooden cross which Harold had made for some decorating
plan of mine. He held it over him, put it into his hand, and bade him
repeat after him, "Christ has conquered. By Thy Cross and Passion; by
Thy precious Death and Burial, good Lord deliver us."

So it went on hour after hour, evening closing into night, the long,
long night brightening at last into day, and still the fever raged, and
the fits of delirious agony came on, as though every fiend that had
ever tempted him were assailing him now. Yet still he had the power to
grasp the Cross when it was held to him, and speak the words, "Christ
has conquered," and his ears were open to the prayer, "By Thy Cross and
Passion, by Thine Agony and Bloody Sweat, good Lord deliver us!"--the
prayer that Ben prayed like Moses at Rephidim. Time came and went, the
Northchester physician came and said he might be saved, if the eruption
could only be brought out, but he feared that it had been thrown
inwards, so that nothing would avail; but of all this Harold knew
nothing, he was only in that seething brain, whose former injury now
added to the danger, living over again all his former life, as those
who knew it could trace in the choked and broken words. Yet, as the
doctors averred, that the conscience and the will should not be
mastered by the delirium was most unusual, and proved the extraordinary
force of his character and resolution, even though the conflict was
evidently a great addition to his sufferings.

Worst of all was the deadly strife, when with darkness came the old
horror of being pursued by hell hounds, driven on by Meg and the rival
he had killed--nay, once it was even by his little children. Then he
turned even from the Cross in agony. "I cannot! See there! They will
not let me!" and he would have thrown himself from his bed, taking the
hands that held him for the dogs' fangs. And yet even then a command
rather than a prayer from the priest reached his ears. He wrestled,
with choking, stifling breath, as though with a weight on his chest,
grappling with his hands as if the dog were at his throat; but at last
he uttered those words once more, "Christ has conquered;" then wi