That voice, those words. Do I dream, or are there spirits near? Oh, how familiar--how painfully familiar--reminiscential of things past. What can it mean? But one voice ever spoke those words in that tone, and that voice will never speak again. The dreamer is in the street. It is my brain that is disturbed. Hark! Again! I heard aright. "Oh, no, he will not come. Why should he? What am I to him? Yet I wanted to see him a moment. It seems as though it is he only who can protect me from that dreaded man. Oh, Phebe, Phebe, what should we do if he were to come here to-night? He has sworn to have revenge upon me for leaving him; yet how could I live with a man who threatened my life every day in his drunken fits? Long after I went to Paris, he wrote to me that he would rob me of my child--his child, if he died in the attempt. I long thought--nay, hoped that he was--that is, that he never would return from Cuba. I heard of him in the dungeons of the Moro, and now he is here." "Yes, ma'am, I is sure he is here. Dat am de fact. Jis sich man, stout, red face, black hair, and such eyes. I is sure he is a wicked man." "Only when he is drinking." "Well, dat all de time wid some folk." There was a groan of anguish in the bed. "But, Phebe, you describe his looks just as I saw them to-day. Have you seen him?" "Oh, yes, ma'am--thought I wouldn't tell you though--but it come out when I didn't know him." "Where? Has he been here? Has he tracked me home?" "Why, you see, ma'am, when I goes to the door to let Agnes Brentnall out, I sees him over the way, by de lamp, and when she goes down the street, he walks after her, and dat am last I see of him dis night." "Poor girl, then she is lost. If ever he fixes his basalisk eye upon her beauty, how can she escape. Poor girl--God protect thee--man will not." There was a sobbing that told of tears--tears that told of a kind heart, crushed by a cold and careless world. Then I was about to enter, but something said, "not yet," and I stepped down into the shadow by the high steps, till the footfall I heard upon the pavement should go by. It did not pass--it came directly up to the door, familiar as a burglar with its night latch key. Why had they not bolted the door? It opened as though to one who had a right to enter. The intruder--it was the dark-visaged man I had seen five minutes before--closed the door gently after him without latching it. There was a thin lace curtain before the window, through which, as I looked in between the slats of the blind, I could see him as he approached the bed. Phebe had left the light and gone into the back room. The lady had buried her face in the pillows--nothing but her raven locks, hanging loose in her neck, were visible. The villain looked at her for a moment, then, satisfied that she was asleep, he reached over her, and lifted a beautiful little girl from her side. "Mother! mother!"