th time, when
these symptoms first struck him.

'Why, burn my body!' said the man, raising himself on his hands as he
stared the girl in the face. 'You look like a corpse come to life
again. What's the matter?'

'Matter!' replied the girl. 'Nothing. What do you look at me so hard
for?'

'What foolery is this?' demanded Sikes, grasping her by the arm, and
shaking her roughly. 'What is it? What do you mean? What are you
thinking of?'

'Of many things, Bill,' replied the girl, shivering, and as she did so,
pressing her hands upon her eyes. 'But, Lord! What odds in that?'

The tone of forced gaiety in which the last words were spoken, seemed
to produce a deeper impression on Sikes than the wild and rigid look
which had preceded them.

'I tell you wot it is,' said Sikes; 'if you haven't caught the fever,
and got it comin' on, now, there's something more than usual in the
wind, and something dangerous too. You're not a-going to--. No,
damme! you wouldn't do that!'

'Do what?' asked the girl.

'There ain't,' said Sikes, fixing his eyes upon her, and muttering the
words to himself; 'there ain't a stauncher-hearted gal going, or I'd
have cut her throat three months ago. She's got the fever coming on;
that's it.'

Fortifying himself with this assurance, Sikes drained the glass to the
bottom, and then, with many grumbling oaths, called for his physic.
The girl jumped up, with great alacrity; poured it quickly out, but
with her back towards him; and held the vessel to his lips, while he
drank off the contents.

'Now,' said the robber, 'come and sit aside of me, and put on your own
face; or I'll alter it so, that you won't know it agin when you do want
it.'

The girl obeyed. Sikes, locking her hand in his, fell back upon the
pillow: turning his eyes upon her face. They closed; opened again;
closed once more; again opened. He shifted his position restlessly;
and, after dozing again, and again, for two or three minutes, and as
often springing up with a look of terror, and gazing vacantly about
him, was suddenly stricken, as it were, while in the very attitude of
rising, into a deep and heavy sleep. The grasp of his hand relaxed;
the upraised arm fell languidly by his side; and he lay like one in a
profound trance.

'The laudanum has taken effect at last,' murmured the girl, as she rose
from the bedside. 'I may be too late, even now.'

She hastily dressed herself in her bonnet and shawl: looking fea