upon me. Ultimately I decided on
writing to the old priest who had been Alfred's tutor, and who, as I
knew, still resided at Wincot Abbey. I told this gentleman all that had
happened, begged him to break my melancholy news as gently as possible
to Miss Elmslie, and assured him of my resolution to remain with Monkton
to the last.

After I had dispatched my letter, and had sent to Gibraltar to secure
the best English medical advice that could be obtained, I felt that I
had done my best, and that nothing remained but to wait and hope.

Many a sad and anxious hour did I pass by my poor friend's bedside. Many
a time did I doubt whether I had done right in giving any encouragement
to his delusion. The reasons for doing so which had suggested themselves
to me after my first interview with him seemed, however, on reflection,
to be valid reasons still. The only way of hastening his return to
England and to Miss Elmslie, who was pining for that return, was the
way I had taken. It was not my fault that a disaster which no man could
foresee had overthrown all his projects and all mine. But, now that the
calamity had happened and was irretrievable, how, in the event of his
physical recovery, was his moral malady to be combated?

When I reflected on the hereditary taint in his mental organization, on
that first childish fright of Stephen Monkton from which he had never
recovered, on the perilously-secluded life that he had led at the Abbey,
and on his firm persuasion of the reality of the apparition by which
he believed himself to be constantly followed, I confess I despaired of
shaking his superstitious faith in every word and line of the old family
prophecy. If the series of striking coincidences which appeared to
attest its truth had made a strong and lasting impression on _me_ (and
this was assuredly the case), how could I wonder that they had produced
the effect of absolute conviction on _his_ mind, constituted as it was?
If I argued with him, and he answered me, how could I rejoin? If he
said, "The prophecy points at the last of the family: _I_ am the last of
the family. The prophecy mentions an empty place in Wincot vault;
there is such an empty place there at this moment. On the faith of the
prophecy I told you that Stephen Monkton's body was unburied, and you
found that it was unburied"--if he said this, what use would it be for
me to reply, "These are only strange coincidences after all?"

The more I thought of the task