Philip Searle was crouching lower and lower by the bed-side, and his forehead, upon which the dews of death were starting, lay languidly beside the thin, white locks that rested on the pillow. "Look, mother!" he said, raising his head and glaring into the corner of the room. "Do you see that form in white?--there--she with the pale cheeks and golden hair! I saw her once before to-day, when she lay stretched upon the bed, with a lily in her white fingers. And once again I saw her in that last desperate charge, when the bullet struck my side. And now she is there again, pale, motionless, but smiling. Does she smile in mockery or forgiveness? I could rather bear a frown than that terrible--that frozen smile. O God! she is coming to me, mother, she is coming to me--she will lay her cold hand upon me. No--it is not she! it is Moll--look, mother, it is Moll, all blackened with smoke and seared with living fire. O God! how terrible! But, mother, I did not do that. When I saw the flames afar off, I shuddered, for I knew how it must be. But I did not do it, Moll, by my lost soul, I did not!" He started to his feet with a convulsive effort. The hot blood spurted from his wound with the exertion and spattered upon the face and breast of his mother--but she felt it not, for she was dead. The last glimmering ray of reason seemed to drive away the phantoms. He turned toward those sharp and withered features, he saw the fallen jaw and lustreless glazed eye. A shudder shook his frame at every point, and with a groan of pain and terror, he fell forward upon the corpse--a corpse himself. CHAPTER XXIII.