the warm sunlight was shining in joyously. Cupids and flowers
were painted on the ceiling; bright ribbons looped up the white
window-curtains; a smart gilt clock ticked on a velvet-covered
mantelpiece; mirrors gleamed on the walls, and flowers in all the
colors of the rainbow speckled the carpet. In the midst of the
finery, and the glitter, and the light, lay the paralyzed man,
with his wandering eyes, and his lifeless lower face--his head
propped high with many pillows; his helpless hands laid out over
the bed-clothes like the hands of a corpse. By the bed head
stood, grim, and old, and silent, the shriveled black nurse; and
on the counter-pane, between his father's outspread hands, lay
the child, in his little white frock, absorbed in the enjoyment
of a new toy. When the door opened, and Mrs. Armadale led
the way in, the boy was tossing his plaything--a soldier on
horseback--backward and forward over the helpless hands on either
side of him; and the father's wandering eyes were following
the toy to and fro, with a stealthy and ceaseless vigilance--a
vigilance as of a wild animal, terrible to see.

The moment Mr. Neal appeared in the doorway, those restless eyes
stopped, looked up, and fastened on the stranger with a fierce
eagerness of inquiry. Slowly the motionless lips struggled into
movement. With thick, hesitating articulation, they put the
question which the eyes asked mutely, into words: "Are you the
man?"

Mr. Neal advanced to the bedside, Mrs. Armadale drawing back from
it as he approached, and waiting with the doctor at the further
end of the room. The child looked up, toy in hand, as the
stranger came near, opened his bright brown eyes in momentary