"Peggy, my child! my child! what is the matter? Oh, Austin--oh! What shall we do?" cried Mrs Asplin, trying to catch hold of the flying arms, only to be waved off with frenzied energy. Mellicent dissolved into tears and retreated behind the sofa, under the impression that Peggy had suddenly taken leave of her senses, and practical Esther rushed upstairs to search for a clue to the mystery among the medicine bellies on Peggy's table. She was absent only for a few minutes; but it seemed like an hour to the watchers, for Peggy's face grew more and more agonised, she seemed on the verge of suffocation, and could neither speak nor endure anyone to approach within yards of her mad career. Presently, however, she began to falter, to draw her breath in longer gasps, and as she did so there emerged from her lips a series of loud whooping sounds, like the crowing of a cock, or the noise made by a child in the convulsions of whooping-cough. The air was making its way to the lungs after the temporary stoppage, and the result would have been comical if any of the hearers had been in a mood for jesting, which, in good truth, they were not. "Thank Heaven! She will be better now. Open the window and leave her alone. Don't try to make her speak. What in the world has the child been doing?" cried the vicar wonderingly; and at that moment Esther entered, bearing in her hand the explanation of the mystery--a bottle labelled "Spirits of Ammonia," and a tumbler about an eighth full of a white milky-looking fluid. "They were in the front of the table. The other things had not been moved. I believe she has never looked at the labels, but seized the first bottle that came to her hand--this dreadfully strong ammonia which you gave her for the gnat bites when she first came." A groan of assent came from the sofa on which Peggy lay, choking no longer, but ghastly white, and drawing her breath in painful gasps. Mrs Asplin sniffed at the contents of the tumbler, only to jerk back her head with watery eyes and reddened lips.