too began to fade, and at length, from exhaustion, from getting wet,
and then lying out of doors all night, and night after night,--worst
of all, from the consuming of the deathly fear, and the shame of
shame, his sleep forsook him, and on the seventh morning, instead of
going to the hunt, he crawled into the castle, and went to bed. The
grand health, over which the witch had taken such pains, had yielded,
and in an hour or two he was moaning and crying out in delirium.




CHAPTER XVI.

AN EVIL NURSE.


Watho was herself ill, as I have said, and was the worse tempered;
and, besides, it is a peculiarity of witches, that what works in
others to sympathy, works in them to repulsion. Also, Watho had a
poor, helpless, rudimentary spleen of a conscience left, just enough
to make her uncomfortable, and therefore more wicked. So, when she
heard that Photogen was ill, she was angry. Ill, indeed! after all she
had done to saturate him with the life of the system, with the solar
might itself! He was a wretched failure, the boy! And because he was
_her_ failure, she was annoyed with him, began to dislike him, grew to
hate him. She looked on him as a painter might upon a picture, or a
poet, upon a poem, which he had only succeeded in getting into an
irrecoverable mess. In the hearts of witches, love and hate lie close
together, and often tumble over each other. And whether it was that
her failure with Photogen foiled also her plans in regard to Nycteris,