He hoped by this tale to bring me to my senses, and that I should soon forget her, and begin courting some other girl, but it had a very different effect upon me, and I rapidly sunk from worse to worse. When the doctor called again, he found me in a dangerous state, and he came to the conclusion that it must be the epidemic after all. Whether I really had caught the epidemic in addition to my love-sickness I can't tell. All I know is that I felt so bad that I didn't expect to live, and even the doctor said it was all over with me. My death was expected daily, and when one morning the doctor came and found me stiff and cold, he gave out to my parents that I was dead. I was no more dead than I am at the present moment. It is true that I could not budge an inch, and I have no doubt that I looked thoroughly dead, but my mind was as clear and as sharp as possible. "Poor young man," I heard the doctor say. "So hale and strong, too. Who'd have thought it?" "Oh, my poor son! my poor son!" wept my father. "You whom I thought to rear to be the prop of my old age, now you are torn from me for ever." "Calm yourself, sir," said the doctor, "else you will make yourself ill." "How can I calm myself?" cried my father, in agony. "Was he not my _only_ son? and I--I--fool, wretch, that I was--_I_ killed him!" "_You_ killed him!" cried the doctor. "How? Surely you rave, sir." "Yes," persisted my father; "the poor boy was in love with a maid whose father is my enemy. I objected to his marrying her, as did also the girl's father, who wishing to save his daughter from my son sent her away to live at the house of an aunt in the village of H---- in ----shire. As my son knew nothing of this, I told him, thinking to make him forget her, that the maid was dead, but the poor boy took on so dreadful about it, that it has been his death, and I--yes I am his murderer!" and I thought his sobs would choke him. "It was very wrong and foolish of you," said the doctor, "to tell him so, when you saw him so weak and ailing, yet you did it with a good intent, and I do not see that you can justly accuse yourself of being his murderer." "Yes, yes," sobbed my father, bitterly, "I have killed him--my son, my _only_ son!" Now I had discovered a secret. Molly was not dead, but living at her aunt's. I knew her address; if I could but be restored to life, I might see her once again. I longed to be able to call out: "Father, I am not dead--comfort yourself," but my tongue refused utterance. I tried to move my limbs, and did all that was in my power to show signs of life, but I still lay powerless--paralysed, for I was in a trance. Oh! the agony I suffered! How long would it last? Should I be really nailed up in a coffin and buried alive? Oh, horror! Some of my friends the neighbours were called in to see me and mourned over my corpse. "Poor Jack!" one of them said; "if lads of his kidney are not proof against the epidemic, who may hope to escape?"