e should not be occupied by a nobler indwelling guest. So
rapidly had the scene passed, so still and lone seemed the apartment,
for Miss Thusa had sunk back on her pillow mute and exhausted, that he
was tempted to believe that it was nothing but a dream. But the wheel
lay in fragments at his feet, the gold lay in shining heaps upon the
table, and a dark mask grinned from the floor. That gold, too!--how
dream-like its existence! Was Miss Thusa a female Midas or Aladdin? Was
the dull brass lamp burning on the table, the gift of the genii? Was the
old gray cabin a witch's magic home?

Rousing himself with a strong effort, he examined the condition of his
patient, and was grieved to find how greatly this shock had accelerated
the work of disease. Her pulse was faint and flickering, her skin cold
and clammy, but after swallowing a cordial, and inhaling the strong odor
of hartshorn, a reaction took place, and she revived astonishingly; but
when she spoke, her mind evidently wandered, sometimes into the shadows
of the past, sometimes into the light of the future.

"What shall I do with this?" asked Arthur, pointing to the gold, anxious
to bring her thoughts to some central point; "and these, too?" stooping
down and picking up a fragment of the wheel.

"Screw it up again--screw it up," she replied, quickly, "and put the
gold back in it. 'Tis Helen's--all little Helen's. Don't let them rob
her after I'm dead."

Rejoicing to hear her speak so rationally, though wondering if what she
said of Helen was not the imagining of a disordered brain, he began to
examine the pieces of the wheel, and found that with the exertion of a
little skill he could put them together again, and that it was only some
slender parts of the machine which were broken. He placed the money in
its hollow receptacles, united the brazen rings, and smoothed the
tangled flax that twined the distaff. Ever and anon Miss Thusa turned
her fading glance towards him, and murmured,

"It is good. It is good!"

For more than an hour she lay perfectly still, when suddenly moving, she
exclaimed,

"Put away the curtain--it's too dark."

Arthur drew aside the curtain from the window nearest the bed, and the
pale, cold moonlight came in, in white, shining bars, and striped the
dark counterpane. One fell across Miss Thusa's face, and illuminated it
with a strange and ghastly lustre.

"Has the moon gone down?" she asked. "I thought it stayed till morning
in the sky. Bu