d lost them.

"Halloo!" he exclaimed, starting up. "What's all this coil about? What
are you doing to me?"

They explained things to him.

"Oh! Fainted, did I!" he said musingly. "I have felt a little faint once
or twice lately. What day is it? What time is it?" Tom mentioned
the meeting of the previous evening, and Raeburn seemed to recollect
himself. He looked at his watch, then at the letter on his desk. "Well,
it's my way to do things thoroughly," he said with a smile; "I must have
been off for a couple of hours. I am very sorry to have disturbed your
slumbers in this way."

As he spoke, he sat down composedly at his desk, picked up the pen
and signed his name to the letter. They stood and watched him while he
folded the sheet and directed the envelope; his writing bore a little
more markedly than usual the tokens of strong self-restraint.

"Perhaps you'll just drop that in the pillar on your way home," he said
to Brian. "I want Jackson to get it by the first post. If you will look
in later on, I should be glad to have a talk with you. At present I'm
too tired to be overhauled."

Then, as Brian left the room, he turned to Erica.

"I am sorry to have given you a fright, my child; but don't worry about
me, I am only a little overdone."

Again that fatal admission, which from Raeburn's lips was more alarming
than a long catalogue of dangerous symptoms from other men!

There followed a disturbed night and a long day in a crowded law court,
then one of the most terrible hours they had ever had to endure while
waiting for the verdict which would either consign Raeburn to prison
or leave him to peace and freedom. So horrible was the suspense that to
draw each breath was to Erica a painful effort. Even Raeburn's composure
was a little shaken as those eternal minutes dragged on.

The foreman returned. The court seemed to throb with excitement. Raeburn
lifted a calm, stern face to hear his fate. He knew what no one else in
the court knew, that this was to him a matter of life and death.

"Are you agreed, gentlemen?"

"Yes."

People listened breathlessly.

"Do you find the defendant guilty, or not?"

"Not guilty."

The reaction was so sharp as to be almost overpowering. But poor Erica's
joy was but short-lived. She looked at her father's face and knew that,
although one anxiety was ended, another was already begun.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. Halcyon Days

There is a sweetness in autumnal days,
Whic