reverberated Over the mountains in tremendous volleys as of
besieging cannon. Stinging drops of icy sleet dashed his face and
the front of his white garb as he inhaled the stormy freshness of
the strong, upward-sweeping blast for a few seconds--and then,
with the air of one gathering together all his scattered forces,
he shut to the window firmly and barred it across. Turning now to
the unconscious Alwyn, he lifted him from the floor to a low couch
near at hand, and there laid him gently down. This done, he stood
looking at him with an expression of the deepest anxiety, but made
no attempt to rouse him from his death-like swoon. His own
habitual serenity was completely broken through,--he had all the
appearance of having received some unexpected and overwhelming
shock,--his very lips were blanched and quivered nervously.

He waited for several minutes, attentively watching the recumbent
figure before him, till gradually,--very gradually,--that figure
took upon itself the pale, stern beauty of a corpse from which
life has but recently and painlessly departed. The limbs grew
stiff and rigid--the features smoothed into that mysteriously wise
placidity which is so often seen in the faces of the dead,--the
closed eyelids looked purple and livid as though bruised ... there
was not a breath, not a tremor, to offer any outward suggestion of
returning animation,--and when, after some little time, Heliobas
bent down and listened, there was no pulsation of the heart ... it
had ceased to beat! To all appearances Alwyn was DEAD--any
physician would have certified the fact, though how he had come by
his death there was no evidence to show. And in that condition,
... stirless, breathless ... white as marble, cold and inanimate
as stone, Heliobas left him. Not in indifference, but in sure
knowledge--knowledge far beyond all mere medical science--that the