His unfortunate wife, worn down with watching and want of food and rest,
now determined to have a regular search for the key of his strongbox,
that she might procure him the medicines prescribed by the doctor, and
purchase oatmeal and bread for the use of the parish girl and herself.

She carefully examined his pockets, his writing-desk, and bureau, but to
no purpose--looking carefully into every drawer and chest that had not
been sold by public auction or private contract. Not a corner of the
chamber was left unexplored--not a closet or shelf escaped her strict
examination, until, giving up the search as perfectly hopeless, she
resumed her station at his bed-side, to watch through the long winter
night--without a fire, and by the wan gleam that a miserable rush-light
shed through the spacious and lofty room--the restless slumbers of the
miser. She was ill, out of spirits, fatigued with her fruitless
exertion, and deeply disappointed at her want of success.

The solitary light threw a ghastly livid hue on the strongly-marked
features of the sleeper, rendered sharp and haggard by disease and his
penurious habits; she could just distinguish through the gloom the
spectre-like form of the invalid, and the long bony attenuated hands
which grasped, from time to time, the curtains and bedclothes, as he
tossed from side to side in his feverish unrest. Elinor continued to
watch the dark and perturbed countenance of the sleeper, until he became
an object of fear, and she fancied that it was some demon who had for a
time usurped the human shape, and not the brother of Algernon--the man
whom she had voluntarily attended to the altar, and in the presence of
Almighty God had sworn to love, honor, and obey, and to cherish in
sickness and in health.

A crushing sense of all the deception that had been practiced upon her,