When Mary reached home she found her brother already in bed, where he lay tossing uneasily in search of the rest and slumber which he could not attain. His cheeks were flushed with incipient fever, and the tangled hair hung about his face in matted locks. His eyes were closed, and his lips moved in inaudible mutterings, as he turned restlessly from one side to the other. He complained of an acute pain in his side which caught his breath, and a dull aching that smouldered like fire in his bones and joints, which he fancied he could count by their separate twingings. The sight of his sister seemed to do him good, and when he felt the coolness of her hand on his brow, he closed his eyes and fell into a kind of slumber; but the sleep was not of very long duration, and it was restless and disturbed. The nightmares of the night before fell on him again; groaning and muttering he tossed to and fro, and presently awoke. The surgeon arrived in due course, and shook his head gravely, while he enjoined the greatest care, as pleurisy or rheumatic fever, or both, appeared to be impending. Roderick lay and muttered, righting with the dismal visions that floated like mists about his brain, and struggling to keep hold of the reality. In that, however, he found little solace, it seemed more dismal than aught a fevered fancy could conjure up to distress him. Visions of Cain driven forth from home and kindred, to wander over the face of the earth an outcast and a stranger; Abram sent forth to find him a new home in a strange and unknown country, turning his back on all that he had ever known or loved; Job with his children all slain in a single hour; those who had cast away a right hand or plucked out a right eye for the sake of the kingdom of righteousness; all the forlorn and desolate and bereaved he had ever heard or dreamed of, passed in melancholy procession before him, and hailed him as their fellow. He looked upon the stricken train, and questioning each as to the nature of his sorrow; it seemed to him that in their misery, they all had justice or hope or consolation. But his? It stood alone among them all, unmerited, unreasonable, without purpose and without pity. There was nothing he had held too dear to part with, nothing he had kept back, when he laid down all to follow his Church into the wilderness. Then why had this new grief come upon him? and what good end was to be served by enacting anew in his case the parable of the prophet Nathan, and robbing him of the one ewe lamb he cherished in his bosom? Since his boyhood, the whole pure love of his heart had been given to Sophia. Her image had filled a shrine in his inmost thoughts, and he had clothed it in all he knew of pure and holy, and held it for a symbol of unseen good. He had waited till in all reasonableness and truth he could win her for his wife, and she and her parents, in some unspoken measure at least, had consented to his resolve.