ing the other end in both hands, pulled it
suddenly with the exertion of her whole strength. The rotten wood gave
way, the cupboard doors flew open, and a heap of little trifles poured
out noisily on the floor. Without stopping to notice the broken china
and glass at her feet, she looked into the dark recesses of the cupboard
and saw the gleam of two glass bottles. One was put away at the extreme
back of the shelf, the other was a little in advance, almost hiding it.
She snatched them both out at once, and took them, one in each hand, to
the window, where she could read their labels in the clearer light.

The bottle in her right hand was the first bottle she looked at. It was
marked--_Sal-volatile_.

She instantly laid the other bottle aside on the table without looking
at it. The other bottle lay there, waiting its turn. It held a dark
liquid, and it was labeled--POISON.

CHAPTER II.

MRS. LECOUNT mixed the sal-volatile with water, and administered
it immediately. The stimulant had its effect. In a few minutes Noel
Vanstone was able to raise himself in the chair without assistance; his
color changed again for the better, and his breath came and went more
freely.

"How do you feel now, sir?" asked Mrs. Lecount. "Are you warm again on
your left side?"

He paid no attention to that inquiry; his eyes, wandering about the
room, turned by chance toward the table. To Mrs. Lecount's surprise,
instead of answering her, he bent forward in his chair, and looked with
staring eyes and pointing hand at the second bottle which she had taken
from the cupboard, and which she had hastily laid aside without paying
attention to it. Seeing that some new alarm possessed him, she advanced
to the table, and looked where he looked. The labeled side of the bottle
was full in view; and there, in the plain handwriting of the chemist at
Aldborough, was the one startling word confronting them both--"Poison."

Even Mrs. Lecount's self-possession was shaken by that discovery. She
was not prepared to see her own darkest forebodings--the unacknowledged
offspring of her hatred for Magdalen--realized as she saw them realized
now. The suicide-despair in which the poison had been procured; the
suicide-purpose for which, in distrust of the future, the poison had
been kept, had brought with them their own retribution. There the bottle
lay, in Magdalen's absence, a false witness of treason which had never
entered her mind--treason against her husb