nd to take
in the event of his sleeplessness continuing to trouble him. The
word "poison" was frightening, and the death's head still more so.
But she recalled what the surgeon had said, that the result of
taking a small dose would be to encourage sleep, and of an overdose
to send into a sleep from which there would be no awaking.

Mehetabel could hardly repress a smile, though it was a sad one,
as she thought of her husband's suspicions lest she should misuse
the draught on him. But her bosom heaved, and her heart beat as
she continued to look at it.

She needed but to extend her hand and she had the means whereby
all her sorrows and aches of heart would be brought to an end.
It was not as if there were any prospect before her of better
times. If sickness had failed to soften and sweeten the temper of
the Broom-Squire, then nothing would do it. Before her lay a hideous
future of self-abnegation, or daily, hourly misery, under his
ill-nature; of continuous torture caused by his cruel tongue. And
her heart was not whole. She still thought of Iver, recalled his
words, his look, the clasp of his arm, his kiss on her lips.

Would the time ever arrive when she could think of him without her
pulse bounding, and a film forming over her eyes?

Would it not be well to end this now? She had but to sip a few
drops from this bottle and then lay her weary head, and still more
weary heart, on the bed, and sleep away into the vast oblivion!

She uncorked the bottle and smelt the laudanum. The odor was
peculiar, it was unlike any other with which she was acquainted.
She even touched the cork with her tongue. The taste was not
unpleasant.

Not a single drop had been taken from the phial. It was precisely
in the condition in which it had arrived.

If she did not yield to the temptation, what was it that stayed
her? Not the knowledge that the country of the Gergesenes lay
southeast of the Lake of Tiberias, otherwise called the Sea of
Galilee; nor that the "lily of the field" was the Scarlet Martagon;
nor that the latitude and longitude of Jerusalem were 31 deg. 47
min. by 53 deg. 15 min., all which facts had been acquired by her
in the Sunday-school; but that which arrested her hand and made
her replace the cork and bottle was the sight of a little white
garment lying on the chair from which she had risen.

Just then she heard her husband's voice, and startled and confused
by what had passed through her mind, she locked the cup