the disappointment of Richard Crawford's absence from the city, penned a
letter and mailed it to Niagara, giving him a rapid detail of all that
she had been doing in his behalf--of events at West Falls--and of the
absolute necessity that he should at once apply some of his marvellously
recovered strength to the purposes of a journey thither. That letter,
which should have reached Niagara as soon as the travellers themselves,
suffered the fate of many-letters that are sent upon matters of life and
death with the magic word "haste" in the lower left-hand corner; and was
not delivered at the Cataract House until Saturday morning. Perhaps it
was quite as well that the detention had occurred on the road, for by
that means the partially-recovered invalid was spared two excitements in
one day, which might have seriously prostrated him.

Even as it was, the shock was a sudden and hazardous one, to a system no
more thoroughly restored than Richard Crawford's. He received that
letter on Saturday morning, with several others from the city, and went
up to his own room to read them. From prudential reasons, Bell, on the
disappearance of Marion Hobart, had taken the vacated room, adjoining
that of her brother; and when he had been for a few moments alone after
his return from the hotel "post-office," she was startled by what seemed
to be a groan issuing from his room. Instantly running to the door and
tapping, when she entered she found him sitting on the side of the bed,
white as the counterpane that covered it, and breathing heavily. She
flew at once to his side, applied the restoratives at hand, and had the
joy of seeing him almost instantly recover breath and voice. Then it was
that she observed that he held a letter in his hand, and that letter he
tendered her. She read, and her own excitement was scarcely less than
that of her brother. Now for the first time she understood the strange
words with reference to the destinies of her family, which had been
uttered by the sybil, and which had done so much to change the very
nature of, her womanhood. And what a revelation was here to her, of the
mental torture which Richard must have experienced through all his long
hopeless illness--of the uncomplaining patience with which he had borne
what must have seemed to him the crushing out of all the best hopes of
his life--of the murderous depravity which could exist in the heart of
one connected with her by the dear ties of blood, and daily