"You want me dead!" he said to his wife; "but I won't die--to spite you. I shall live years, and years, and years, 'till you are a toothless hag, and walk with a crutch! Ha! ha!" "He is delirious!" whispered Ida. "Let me stay with you!" "He is _not_! I prefer your retiring. Sarah will call you at two." "I shall not undress, to-night, Rachel," said Ida. "I have a presentiment I shall be wanted." "Is he much worse?" "No--but I may be called up. I shall sleep here, upon the lounge." But sleep was coy to her wooing. If she had ever felt fear, she would have known that she was scared and excited. The south wind generally affected her unpleasantly, creating heat and nervousness; but to-night the breeze was from the north, and the moonbeams were spread in broad, white sheets upon the floor. "I must be sick!" she said, aloud. "I cannot ascribe this numb horror to anything else. They have a superstition that it is a precursor of death." Her mind rejected this explanation, but the utterance of that word had populated her soul with phantoms. Lynn's chill, damp hands again enfolded hers; and his glazed, upward look--still and fixed, moved not at her weeping; the clods rattled upon the coffin--frozen clods! and how warmly soever the sun smiled upon the swelling turf--down where he slept, it was frosty night still! Must he, the loved and gifted, rest there forever? would a tender mother's arms never more embrace her,--the dear lips, now turned to dust, never cling to hers, in speechless fondness? But the dead should rise! some to the resurrection of the just, some to everlasting shame and contempt. Oh! the unspeakable woe of a hopeless death! the dying strife of the finally impenitent! Was _his_ end approaching? "My God! avert from him this doom!" His room was beneath hers. She could hear occasionally a groan, which she knew was an execration. He might be dying. She thrust her feet into a pair of felted slippers, and descended to his door. "Quiet--quiet _as death_!" "This is improper! irrational!" said she, severely, to herself. "I need repose and steadiness of nerve--there are watchers with him." But she would not go back to her room. She went, instead, to the parlor. The hall-lamp burned all night; and setting open a door, and unclosing a shutter, to dissipate the darkness, which suffocated her, as a thick pall, she stretched herself upon a sofa. She slumbered and dreamed--visions, like her waking fancies. She was in Mr. Read's chamber; writing to Carry, at her far window;--the door swung back, and his wife glided in. With a gesture of silence to her, she passed to his bedside, and poised a knife above his heart! Ida strove to scream--to move--but her mighty efforts only shifted the scene--did not awaken her. He was dead; and his friends had come to the funeral. They thronged the room where his corpse lay in its costly coffin; and the carriages, headed by the hearse, grated upon the pebbled gutter. The undertaker was