"Oh, mamma, I am so glad," responded Dorothy, clasping her little arms about her mother's neck. "Dorothy, dear, where is he?" questioned Virginia, in a whisper. "He was in the room when I came to bed, Auntie." "He is not there now. He must be away." And a prospect of getting the child away without a struggle nerved her to instant action. "Come," she exclaimed, "we must go at once. Don't speak, sweetheart. Silence; come, Constance, quick!" "Yes, yes; go on," was Constance's almost hysterical reply. And so, with the child in her arms and Virginia pulling at her sleeves to guide and hasten her, they groped as cautiously as possible in the darkness, towards the cabin door. They had proceeded a few paces when Virginia, in her eagerness, rubbed against the table; she stepped aside to clear it, and in doing so, jolted Constance. It was then, under the strain of the stiffled emotions of the past few days, and the great excitement attendant on the present enterprise, together with the sudden reactionary joy of again clasping her child, that the first symptom of the mother's mental breakdown occurred. "Oh," she faintly screamed, "the boat rocks," and she would have fallen to the floor had not a chair, the only one in the cabin, luckily stood nearby. She stumbled against it and sank upon the seat, with Dorothy tightly clasped in her arms. Unable in the darkness to comprehend the pause, Virginia tugged urgently at Constance's sleeve. "Come along, dear, we must be quick." "Very well! Why don't you use the paddles?" replied Constance, in an altered tone, a strange metallic ring in her voice, and with less agitation than she had recently displayed. Still unable, or rather refusing herself to think anything was wrong, and with a panicky impatience to be gone from the den, Virginia again urged Constance to hasten. "Don't sit there, dear! Come along! We have not a moment to lose. Shall I carry Dorothy?" The answer startled her; a new terror had appeared. "Don't you see that I am holding my heart tight. I cannot let go to help you. Make the boat go faster. Why don't you paddle." Virginia's heart leaped to her throat. "Her mind is giving away," she exclaimed, with a gasp. There, then, the typhoid aftermath, which had been predicted would develop in time in Constance some strange and serious ailment, had found a lodgement, and now, bursting into life, lay siege to nature's most wonderful creation, the human brain. A moment of terrifying consternation followed. "What shall I do now?" Virginia distractedly exclaimed. "Paddle, paddle, paddle," feebly responded Constance. Unmindful of the reply, Virginia stood as if transfixed with despair. She racked her brain for a way out. The situation was fast verging on the tragic. "I will barricade the door!" she determined. "No, he may smash in the roof or sink us; I must get them away somehow."