e! Speak one at a time. Mrs. Smith, do you answer
me. How was Miss Tabby saved?" inquired Lyon Berners, appealing to the
oldest and wisest woman of the assembly, and silencing the others by a
gesture.

"Indeed we don't know how she was reskeed, sir. She was brought home by
a quarryman, but, she was in a cowld fever, and couldn't give no account
of herself, nor nothing," replied the old woman.

"Where is she?"

"Up to her father's house, sir. They carried her there."

"I must go there and see her at once," said Mr. Berners, seizing his hat
and hurrying from the house.

He walked rapidly through the kitchen garden, vineyard, orchard, and
meadow, to the edge of the wood where the overseer's cottage stood.

He found old Mrs. Winterose with her hands full.

Mr. Winterose, who three days before had had a paralytic stroke, that
had nearly brought him to the grave, had now so far rallied as to give
hopes of his continued life.

He lay sleeping on a neat white bed in the lower front room of the
cottage. His wife was the only person with him.

She came forward in great haste to meet Mr. Berners.

"Oh, sir!" she cried, "my child, Miss Sybil! was she reskeed?"

"Ah, Heaven! That is the very question I came to ask you, or rather to
ask Tabby," sighed Mr. Berners, dropping into a chair.

"Oh, sir! Oh, sir!" wept the old nurse, "then I can't give you any more
satisfaction than you can give me! Tabby don't know nothink! She's in
bed up stairs, in a fever, and outen her mind, and Libby is a watching
of her."

"Does she talk in her delirium?"

"Talk? Law, sir, she don't do nothink else at all! Her tongue goes like
a mill-clapper all the time!"

"Let me go and see her. Perhaps by her rambling talk I may gain some
clue to my poor wife's fate."

"I'm 'fraid you won't, sir. _I_ an't been able to yet. But you're
welcome to come up and see her if you will," said the old woman, rising
and leading the way to a neat room overhead, where Miss Tabby lay in
bed, babbling at random.

Miss Libby, who was sitting beside her, got up and courtesied, and made
way for Mr. Berners, who came forward and bent over the sick woman,
spoke to her kindly, and inquired how she felt.

But the old maid, who was quite delirious, took him for the sweetheart
of her young days, and called him "Jim," and asked him how he dared to
have the "impidince" to come into a young lady's room before she was up
in the morning, and she requested Suzy--a sister