ashed forward and flung aside the sheets,
he beheld the blond young man whom he had seen in the Bullier Ball the
night before, his eyes open and without speculation, his face swollen
and blackened, and a thin stream of blood trickling from his nostrils.

Silas uttered a long, tremulous wail, dropped the candle and fell on his
knees beside the bed.

Silas was awakened from the stupor into which his terrible discovery had
plunged him, by a prolonged but discreet tapping at the door. It took
him some seconds to remember his position; and when he hastened to
prevent any one from entering it was already too late. Dr. Noel, in a
tall nightcap, carrying a lamp which lighted up his long white
countenance, sidling in his gait, and peering and cocking his head like
some sort of bird, pushed the door slowly open, and advanced into the
middle of the room.

"I thought I heard a cry," began the Doctor, "and fearing you might be
unwell I did not hesitate to offer this intrusion."

Silas, with a flushed face and a fearful beating heart, kept between the
Doctor and the bed; but he found no voice to answer.

"You are in the dark," pursued the Doctor; "and yet you have not even
begun to prepare for rest. You will not easily persuade me against my
own eyesight; and your face declares most eloquently that you require
either a friend or a physician--which is it to be? Let me feel your
pulse, for that is often a just reporter of the heart."

He advanced to Silas, who still retreated before him backwards, and
sought to take him by the wrist; but the strain on the young American's
nerves had become too great for endurance. He avoided the Doctor with a
febrile movement, and, throwing himself upon the floor, burst into a
flood of weeping.

As soon as Dr. Noel perceived the dead man in the bed his face
darkened; and hurrying back to the door, which he had left ajar, he
hastily closed and double-locked it.

"Up!" he cried, addressing Silas in strident tones; this is no time for
weeping. "What have you done? How came this body in your room? Speak
freely to one who may be helpful. Do you imagine I would ruin you? Do
you think this piece of dead flesh on your pillow can alter in any
degree the sympathy with which you have inspired me? Credulous youth,
the horror with which blind and unjust law regards an action never
attaches to the doer in the eyes of those who love him; and if I saw the
friend of my heart return to me out of seas of blood h