fire to that accursed pile called Armine Castle for my
funeral pyre.'

'Ferdinand, you are not well,' said Mr. Glastonbury, grasping his hand.
'You need rest. You must retire; indeed you must. I must be obeyed. My
bed is yours.'

'No! let me go to my own room,' murmured Ferdinand, in a faint voice.
'That room where my mother said the day would come--oh! what did my
mother say? Would there were only mother's love, and then I should not
be here or thus.'

'I pray you, my child, rest here.'

'No! let us to the Place, for an hour; I shall not sleep more than an
hour. I am off again directly the storm is over. If it had not been for
this cursed rain I should have caught them. And yet, perhaps, they are
in countries where there is no rain. Ah! who would believe what happens
in this world? Not I, for one. Now, give me your arm. Good Glastonbury!
you are always the same. You seem to me the only thing in the world that
is unchanged.'

Glastonbury, with an air of great tenderness and anxiety, led his former
pupil down the stairs. The weather was more calm. There were some dark
blue rifts in the black sky which revealed a star or two. Ferdinand said
nothing in their progress to the Place except once, when he looked up to
the sky, and said, as it were to himself, 'She loved the stars.'

Glastonbury had some difficulty in rousing the man and his wife,
who were the inmates of the Place; but it was not very late, and,
fortunately, they had not retired for the night. Lights were brought
into Lady Armine's drawing-room. Glastonbury led Ferdinand to a sofa,
on which he rather permitted others to place him than seated himself.
He took no notice of anything that was going on, but remained with his
eyes open, gazing feebly with a rather vacant air.

Then the good Glastonbury looked to the arrangement of his
sleeping-room, drawing the curtains, seeing that the bed was well
aired and warmed, and himself adding blocks to the wood fire which soon
kindled. Nor did he forget to prepare, with the aid of the good woman,
some hot potion that might soothe and comfort his stricken and exhausted
charge, who in this moment of distress and desolation had come, as it
were, and thrown himself on the bosom of his earliest friend. When
all was arranged Glastonbury descended to Ferdinand, whom he found in
exactly the same position as that in which he left him. He offered no
resistance to the invitation of Glastonbury to retire to his chamber.
He nei