The Colonel looked at her a moment, and then said, "If you are Amy's daughter you are a Harris, and they are queer, with slow minds,--and now go. I am infernally tired, and cannot keep up much longer." He moved his hand toward her, and Eloise took it and pressed it to her lips. "D-don't," the Colonel said, but held fast to the soft, warm hand clasping his. "If one's life could roll back," he added, more to himself than to Eloise, as his head dropped wearily upon his breast, and he whispered, "I am sorry for a great deal. God knows I am sorry. Call Peter." The old servant came and got him to bed, and sat by him most of the night. Toward morning, finding that he was sleeping quietly, he, too, lay down and slept until the early sun was shining into the room. Waking with a start, he hurried to his master's side, to find him with wide-open eyes full of terror as he tried to ask what had happened to him. All power to move except his head was gone, and when he tried to talk his lips gave only inarticulate sounds which no one could understand. "Paralysis," the doctor said when summoned. "I have expected it a long time," he continued, and would give no hope to Amy and Eloise, who hastened to the sick-room. The moment they came in the Colonel's eyes brightened, and when Amy stooped and kissed him he tried to kiss her back. Then he fixed his eyes on Eloise with a questioning glance, which made her say to him, "Do you know me?" He struggled hard for a moment, and then replied, "Yesh, 'Lisha Ann! Stay!" and those were the only really intelligible words he ever spoke. They telegraphed to Worcester for Howard, and learning that he was in Boston, telegraphed there, and found him at the Vendome. "Come at once. Your uncle is dying," the telegram said, and Howard read it with a sensation for which he hated himself, and which he could not entirely shake off. He tried to believe he did not want his uncle to die, but if he did die, what might it not do for him, the only direct heir, if Amy were not a lawful daughter? And he did not believe she was. She had not been adopted, and he had never heard of a will, and before he was aware of it a feeling that he was master of Crompton Place crept over him. Amy would live there, of course, just as she did now, even if he should marry, as he might, and there came up before him the memory of a rainy night and a helpless little girl sitting on a mound of stones and dirt and crying with fear and pain. He had seen Jack's interest in Eloise with outward indifference, but with a growing jealousy he was too proud to show. He admired her greatly, and thought that under some circumstances he might love her. As a Crompton he ought to look higher, and if he proved to be the heir it would never do to think of her even if Jack were not in his way. All this passed like lightning through his mind as he read the telegram and handed it to Jack, who, he insisted, should return with him to Crompton.