But this dreamy condition did not last long. There was a bowed look about Abner, and his hair was altogether too white for him to be identified with the Abner of twenty years back. Saul raised his own hand and looked at it curiously. It was shrunken to skin and bone, but a great hand still, with indications of vanished power and strength. The dark sombre eyes roved round and round the room. Memory was awakening, the mists of fever and delirium were passing away. Suddenly Saul seemed to see as in a panorama the whole map of his past life rolled out before him. It was written in characters of fire upon the bare walls of the room. Everywhere he looked he saw his wild and evil deeds depicted. Why was it that they looked black and hideous to him now, when hitherto he had gloried in them--gloated over them? He saw, last of all, the doomed vessel bearing straight down upon the cruel rocks. And now he seemed to see a face on board that vessel--the face of one he loved--the face of the man who had held out his hand in friendship, when (as he believed) all the world beside had turned its back upon him. He saw the face of this friend looking at him with a deep reproach in the eyes, and a sudden groan of anguish broke from Saul’s lips as he stretched out his hands to stay the course of the doomed vessel. At the sound of that groan Abner rose quickly and came forward to the bedside. The ray of dying daylight was fading already, and the shadow of the winter’s evening closing in; and yet in the dimness about the bed, Abner thought he saw something new in Saul’s face. “Saul, my lad,” he said gently, “do you know me?” “Tu be sure I du,” answered Saul, and wondered why his voice sounded so distant and hollow. “What’s the matter, grandfather?” “You have been in a fever for many days, my lad, and didn’t know anybody about yu. What is it, boy? Don’t excite yourself. Yu must be kept quite quiet.” Saul’s face was changing every moment, turning from red to pale and pale to red. He was struggling with emotion and a rush of recollection. For a moment Abner’s voice and presence had arrested the course of his memories; but now they came surging back. “Grandfather, tell me,” he cried, struggling to sit up and then sinking back in his weakness, “what happened?--how did I get out of the water? Where is Mr. Marchmont?” “Here in the castle. You were brought in together. They could not loose your clasp upon him for a long time.” “And where is he? Is he alive?” “Yes--alive, and like to live.” Saul suddenly pressed his hands together and broke into wild weeping. “Thank God! thank God!” he cried, his whole frame shaken with sobs. “Grandfather, pray for me--you know I never learned to pray for myself--at least I have well-nigh forgotten now. But down on your knees and thank God for that for me! May be He will hear yu. It must have been He that saved him; for the devil was at my ear all the while prompting me to let him die.”