"As near as I can recollect, it was this: 'If any man suffers for this crime it shall not be Craik Mansell, but----' He did not have time to say whom." "My poor friend!" ejaculated Mr. Ferris, "cut down in the exercise of his duties! It is a mysterious providence--a very mysterious providence!" And crossing again to the sick-room, he went sadly in. He found the aspect unchanged. On the pillow the same white, immovable face; at the bedside the same constant and expectant watchers. Imogene especially seemed scarcely to have made a move in all the time of his absence. Like a marble image watching over a form of clay she sat silent, breathless, intent--a sight to draw all eyes and satisfy none; for her look was not one of grief, nor of awe, nor of hope, yet it had that within it which made her presence there seem a matter of right even to those who did not know the exact character of the bond which united her to the unhappy sufferer. Mr. Ferris, who had been only too ready to accept Mr. Byrd's explanation of her conduct, allowed himself to gaze at her unhindered. Overwhelmed, as he was, by the calamity which promised to rob the Bar of one of its most distinguished advocates, and himself of a long-tried friend, he could not but feel the throb of those deep interests which, in the estimation of this woman at least, hung upon a word which those dying lips might utter. And swayed by this feeling, he unconsciously became a third watcher, though for what, and in hope of what, he could scarcely have told, so much was he benumbed by the suddenness of this great catastrophe, and the extraordinary circumstances by which it was surrounded. And so one o'clock came and passed.