struck a chill through her as being phantom-like. But she had seen a
saddle on the horse, and the stirrups flying, and the horse looked
affrighted. The scene was too earthly in its suggestion of a tale of
blood. What if the horse were Robert's? She tried to laugh at her
womanly fearfulness, and had almost to suppress a scream in doing so.
There was no help for it but to believe her brandy as good and
efficacious as her guests did, so she went downstairs and took a
fortifying draught; after which her blood travelled faster, and the event
galloped swiftly into the recesses of time, and she slept.

While the morning was still black, and the streets without a sign of
life, she was aroused by a dream of some one knocking at her grave-stone.
"Ah, that brandy!" she sighed. "This is what a poor woman has to pay for
custom!" Which we may interpret as the remorseful morning confession of
a guilt she had been the victim of over night. She knew that good brandy
did not give bad dreams, and was self-convicted. Strange were her
sensations when the knocking continued; and presently she heard a voice
in the naked street below call in a moan, "Mother!"

"My darling!" she answered, divided in her guess at its being Harry or
Robert.

A glance from the open window showed Robert leaning in the quaint old
porch, with his head bound by a handkerchief; but he had no strength to
reply to a question at that distance, and when she let him in he made two
steps and dropped forward on the floor.

Lying there, he plucked at her skirts. She was shouting for help, but
with her ready apprehension of the pride in his character, she knew what
was meant by his broken whisper before she put her ear to his lips, and