"DEAR BROTHER: On my return home I found our father much worse,
indeed, I have never seen him so bad, and he insists upon your
coming to him to-night, so I have sent Sam for you, with
instructions to call on his return for our clergyman, Mr. Sanford,
as he wishes particularly to see him. Come at once, and _come
alone_."

"HANNAH."

The words "come alone" were underscored, and Burton felt intuitively
that the secret he had long suspected and which had shadowed his
father's life, was at last coming to him unsought. He was sure of it,
and knew why Hannah had written "come alone." It meant that Grey must
not come with him, and when the boy who had stood beside him and read
the note with him, exclaimed, "Grandpa is worse; he is going to die; let
us go at once," he said, very decidedly:

"No, my son, not to-night. To-morrow you shall go and stay all day, but
not to-night, in this storm."

Very unwillingly Grey yielded, and saw his father depart without him.

"How is my father? How does he seem?" Mr. Jerrold asked of the boy Sam,
who replied:

"I don't know; I have not seen him. He would not even let me in this
afternoon when Miss Hannah was gone. He locked the door, and I heard him
working at something on the floor by his bed, as if trying to tear up
the plank. He was there when Miss Hannah came home and found him. I
guess he is pretty crazy. But here we are at the minister's, I was to