im during this anxious time; but through all his
wild delirium and ravings he never let a word escape him which explained
the mystery connected with Miss Northcott. Sometimes he spoke of her
in the tenderest words and most loving voice. At others he screamed out
that she was a fiend, and stretched out his arms, as if to keep her off.
Several times he cried that he would not sell his soul for a beautiful
face, and then he would moan in a most piteous voice, "But I love her--I
love her for all that; I shall never cease to love her."

When he came to himself he was an altered man. His severe illness
had emaciated him greatly, but his dark eyes had lost none of their
brightness. They shone out with startling brilliancy from under
his dark, overhanging brows. His manner was eccentric and
variable--sometimes irritable, sometimes recklessly mirthful, but never
natural. He would glance about him in a strange, suspicious manner, like
one who feared something, and yet hardly knew what it was he dreaded. He
never mentioned Miss Northcott's name--never until that fatal evening of
which I have now to speak.

In an endeavour to break the current of his thoughts by frequent change
of scene, I travelled with him through the highlands of Scotland, and
afterwards down the east coast. In one of these peregrinations of ours
we visited the Isle of May, an island near the mouth of the Firth of
Forth, which, except in the tourist season, is singularly barren and
desolate. Beyond the keeper of the lighthouse there are only one or
two families of poor fisher-folk, who sustain a precarious existence by
their nets, and by the capture of cormorants and solan geese. This grim
spot seemed to have such a fascination for Cowles that we engaged a room
in one of the fishermen's huts, with the intention of passing a week
or two there. I found it very dull, but the loneliness appeared to be a
relief to my friend's mind. He lost the look of apprehension which had
become habitual to him, and became something like his old self.

He would wander round the island all day, looking down from the summit
of the great cliffs which gird it round, and watching the long green
waves as they came booming in and burst in a shower of spray over the
rocks beneath.

One night--I think it was our third or fourth on the island--Barrington
Cowles and I went outside the cottage before retiring to rest, to enjoy
a little fresh air, for our room was small, and the rough lamp c