"I'll rid the house of me now that I have broke it to you, sir. If you want me I shall be found at father's cottage; I suppose they'll let me stay there: if not, you can hear of me at the place where I've left my baby. And if your son should ever wake out of his delirium, Major Parrifer, he will be able to tell you that if he had listened to me and heeded me, or even only come to spend his evenings with me--which it's months since he did--he would not have been in this plight now. Should they try him for murder; and nothing can save him from it if he gets well; I----" A succession of screams cut short what Cathy was about to add. In her surprise she drew wide the door, and was confronted by Miss Jemima Parrifer. That young lady, curious upon the subject of the visit and visitor, had thought it well to put her ear to the library door. With no effect, however, until Cathy unlatched it. And then she heard more than she had thought for. "Is it _you_!" roughly cried Miss Jemima, recognizing her for the ill-talked-of Cathy Reed, the daughter of the Major's enemy. "What do you want here?" Cathy did not answer. She walked to the hall-door and let herself out. Miss Jemima went on into the library. "Papa, what was it she was saying about Spencer, that vile girl? What did she do here? Why did she send in her name as Mrs. Parrifer?" The Major might have heard the questions, or he might not; he didn't respond to them. Miss Jemima, looking closely at him in the darkness of the room, saw a grey, worn, terror-stricken face, that looked as her father's had never looked yet. "Oh, papa! what is the matter? Are you ill?" He walked towards her in the quietest manner possible, took her arm and pushed her out at the door. Not rudely; softly, as one might do who is in a dream. "Presently, presently," he muttered in quite an altered voice, low and timid. And Miss Jemima found the door bolted against her. It must have been an awful moment with him. Look on what side he would, there was no comfort. Spencer Parrifer was ruined past redemption. He might die in this illness, and then, what of his soul? Not that the Major was given to that kind of reflection. Escaping the illness, he must be tried--for his life, as Cathy had phrased it. And escaping that, if the miracle were possible, there remained the miserable debts and the miserable wife he had clogged himself with. Curiously enough, as the miserable Major, most miserable in that moment, pictured these things, there suddenly rose up before his mind's eye another picture. A remembrance of Reed, who had stood in that very room less than twelve months ago, in the dim light of late night, with his hair cut close, and his warning: "_It will come home to you, Major Parrifer._" _Had_ it come home to him? Home to him already? The drops of agony broke out on his face as he asked the question. It seemed to him, in that moment of excitement, so very like some of Heaven's own lightning.