"Come, please, come quick," she said, in a whisper; and following her out, Miss McDonald asked what was the matter. "_This_, you must go away at once. I’ll pack your things. I promised not to tell, but I must. I can’t see your pretty face all spoiled and ugly." "What do you mean?" the lady asked, and after a little questioning she made out from the girl’s statement, that in strolling on the back piazza she had stumbled upon her first cousin, of whose whereabouts she had known nothing for a long time. This girl, Marie, had, it seemed, come to Saratoga a week or ten days before, with her master’s family consisting of his wife and two little children. As the hotel was crowded, they were assigned rooms for the night in a distant part of the house, with a promise of something much better on the morrow. In the morning, however, the lady, who had not been well for some days, was too sick to leave her bed, and the doctor, who was called in to see her, pronounced the disease,—here Sarah stopped and gasped for breath, and looked behind her and all ways, and finally whispered a word which made even Miss McDonald start a little and wince with fear. "He do call it the _very-o-lord_," Sarah said, "but Mary says it’s the _very old one_ himself. She knows, she has had it, and you can’t put down a pin where it didn’t have its claws. They told the landlord, who was for putting them straight out of doors, but the doctor said the lady must not be moved,—it was sure death to do it. It was better to keep quiet, and not make a panic. Nobody need to know it in the house, and their rooms are so far from everybody that nobody would catch it. So he let them stay, and the gentleman takes care of her, and Mary keeps the children in the next room, and carries and brings the things, and keeps away from everybody. Two of the servants know it, and they’ve had it, and don’t tell, and she said I mustn’t, nor come that side of the house, but I must tell you so that you can leave to-morrow. The lady is very bad, and nobody takes care of her but Mr. Thornton. Mary takes things to the door, and leaves them outside where he can get them." "What did you call the gentleman?" Miss McDonald asked, her voice faltering and her cheek blanching a little. "Mr. Thornton, from Cuylerville, a place far in the country," was the girl’s reply; and then, without waiting to hear more, Miss McDonald darted away, and going to the office, turned the leaves of the Register to the date of ten or eleven days ago, and read with a beating heart and quick coming breath: "Mr. and Mrs. Guy Thornton, two children and servant. No. -- and --."