ring falsehood down his throat."

And he seized his hat and ran furiously about the streets for hours.

Towards sunset he came back white as a ghost. He had not found Memling;
but his poor mind had had time to realise the woman's simple words, that
Death spares none.

He crept into the house bent, and feeble as an old man, and refused
all food. Nor would he speak, but sat, white, with great staring eyes,
muttering at intervals, "There is no God." Alarmed both on his account
and on her own (for he looked a desperate maniac), his landlady ran for
her aunt.

The good dame came, and the two women, braver together, sat one on each
side of him, and tried to soothe him with kind and consoling voices.
But he heeded them no more than the chairs they sat on. Then the younger
held a crucifix out before him, to aid her. "Maria, mother of heaven,
comfort him," they sighed. But he sat glaring, deaf to all external
sounds.

Presently, without any warning, he jumped up, struck the crucifix rudely
out of his way with a curse, and made a headlong dash at the door. The
poor women shrieked. But ere he reached the door, something seemed to
them to draw him up straight by his hair, and twirl him round like a
top. He whirled twice round with arms extended; then fell like a dead
log upon the floor, with blood trickling from his nostrils and ears.

CHAPTER XLII

Gerard returned to consciousness and to despair.

On the second day he was raving with fever on the brain.

On a table hard by lay his rich auburn hair, long as a woman's.

The deadlier symptoms succeeded one another rapidly.

On the fifth day his leech retired and gave him up.

On the sunset of that same day he fell into a deep sleep.

Some said he would wake only to die.

But an old gossip, whose opinion carried weight (she had been a
professional nurse), declared that his youth might save him yet, could
he sleep twelve hours.

On this his old landlady cleared the room and watched him alone. She
vowed a wax candle to the Virgin for every hour he should sleep.

He slept twelve hours.

The good soul rejoiced, and thanked the Virgin on her knees.

He slept twenty-four hours.

His kind nurse began to doubt. At the thirtieth hour she sent for the
woman of art.

"Thirty hours! shall we wake him?"

The other inspected him closely for some time.

"His breath is even, his hand moist. I know there be learned leeches
would wake him, to look at his tongue, and be n