The night gradually fell upon Poynings--the soft, sweet, early summer night. It crept into the sick-room, and overshadowed the still form upon the bed--the form whose stillness was to be succeeded by the fierce unrest, the torturing vague effort of fever; it closed over the stern pompous master of Poynings, wakeful and sorely troubled. It darkened the pretty chamber, decorated with a thousand girlish treasures and simple adornments, in which Clare Carruthers was striving sorely with the first fierce trial of her prosperous young life. When it was at its darkest and deepest, the girl's swollen weary eyelids closed, conquered by the irresistible mighty benefactor of the young who suffer. Then, if any eye could have pierced the darkness and looked at her as she lay sleeping, the stamp of a great fear upon her face even in her slumber, and her breast shaken by frequent heavy sighs, it would have been seen that one hand was hidden under the pillow, and the fair cheek pressed tightly down upon it, for better security. That hand was closed upon three letters, severally addressed to the advertising department of three of the daily newspapers. The contents, which were uniform, had cost the girl hours of anxious and agonizing thoughts. They were very simple, and were as follows, accompanied by the sum which she supposed their insertion would cost, very liberally estimated: "The gentleman who showed a lady a sprig of myrtle on last Saturday is earnestly entreated by her not to revisit the place where he met her. He will inevitably be recognized." "God forgive me if I am doing wrong in this!" Clare Carruthers had said with her last waking consciousness. "God forgive me, but I must save him if I can!" CHAPTER XIV. THE SHADOW LIGHTENED. Long before Mr. Carruthers, impelled by the irresistible force of routine, which not all the concern, and even alarm, occasioned him by Mrs. Carruthers's condition could subdue, had issued forth upon his daily tour of inspection, Clare's letters had been safely posted by her own hand at the village. She had slept but little on the night which had fallen on her first experience of fear and grief; and waking at dawn, oppressed by a heavy sense of some dimly-understood calamity, she had recalled it all in a moment; and having hurriedly dressed herself, she went down to the breakfast-room, and let herself out through the window, accompanied by her dog, whose joyous gambols in the bright morning air she did not notice. That morning air struck chill to the weary limbs and aching head of the sad, bewildered girl as she pursued her rapid way through the shrubbery, brushing the dew from the branches of the trees as she passed hurriedly along heart-sick, and yet wandering and confused in her thoughts.