With a rapidly beating heart and throbbing pulses, Mona softly let herself in with a latch-key, turned out the hall gas, which had been left burning dimly for her, and started to mount the stairs, when she espied a gleam of light shining beneath the library door. "Why! Uncle Walter has not gone to bed yet! Can it be that he is sitting up for me?" she murmured. "I will go and tell him that I have come in, and get my good-night kiss." She turned back and went quietly down the hall, and tapped lightly at the door. Receiving no response, she opened it, and passed into the room. The gas was burning brightly, and Mr. Dinsmore was sitting before his desk, but reclining in his chair, his head thrown back against the soft, bright head-rest, the work of Mona's skillful fingers. "He has fallen asleep," said the fair girl, as she went to his side and laid her hand gently upon his shoulder. "Uncle Walter," she called, "why did you sit up for me? Wake up now and go to bed, or you will be having one of your dreadful headaches to-morrow." But the man did not make or show any signs of having heard her. He was breathing heavily, and Mona now noticed that his face was unnaturally flushed, and that the veins upon his temples were knotted and swollen. A startled look swept over her face, and she grew white with a sudden fear. "Uncle Walter!" she cried out, sharply, and trying to arouse him; "speak to me! Oh! there is something dreadful the matter with him; he is ill--he is unconscious!" With a wild cry and sob of fear and anguish, she turned and sped with flying feet from the room. A moment later she was knocking vigorously at the door of the serving-man's room, begging him to "get up at once and go for Doctor Hammond, for Mr. Dinsmore was very ill." Having aroused James, she called the other servants, and then flew back to her idolized uncle. There was no change in him; he sat and breathed just the same. Instinctively feeling that something ought to be done immediately for his relief, with trembling fingers she loosened his neck-tie, unbuttoned his collar, then drenching her handkerchief with water from an ice pitcher, she began to bathe his flushed and knotted forehead. She imagined that this afforded him some relief, and that his breathing was not quite so labored, but his condition drove her nearly frantic with fear and anxiety. James was very expeditious in his movements, and in less than half an hour returned with the family physician. "Oh, Doctor Hammond, what is the matter with him?" Mona cried, with a sinking heart, as she saw the grave expression that settled over the doctor's face the moment he reached his patient's side. "An apoplectic attack," he replied, thinking it best that she should know the truth, and so be somewhat prepared for what he feared must soon come.