I indeed needed her help. Frail and delicate as poor Geraldine was, the fever made her powerful as a strong man. She cried and moaned piteously amid her struggles, and when we had laid her down it took our united strength to keep her from breaking from us and rushing again to the window. She grew exhausted at last and lay still, muttering wildly and clutching at the bed-clothes. "We must send for a doctor, Mrs. Williams," I said. "Is there one in Cliffegate?" "There is only Mr. Jenkinson the apothecary, Sir," she replied. "But I could rouse up Hewett" (the lad who attended to the phaeton), "and it wouldn't take him long to fetch Dr. Sandwin from Cornpool." "Do so; and tell him to drive over as fast as he can." Geraldine lay back with her eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. Her lips muttered continuously, but the exhaustion consequent upon her violent struggles seemed to have left her too weak to articulate. I left her side and paced the room in a mood I must not attempt to define. What was I to think of her diary? That it was an insane chronicle from beginning to end? or that it was true? If insane, how much was she to be pitied! For all that she had recorded as having witnessed, endured and done, must have been more definite and torturing than ever the reality could have proved. If true ... I dared not think it true. Yet though we may barricade reason with illusion, truth will somehow force an entry. A terror that what she had written was the truth, that her final record embodied no imaginary tragedy, weighed upon me like lead. I tried to shake it from my mind. Mrs. Williams returned. Her presence was grateful. It forced me, so to speak, to break from my hateful thoughts and to abandon for the time being speculation for reality. The two hours that followed passed slowly. Mrs. Williams and I spoke across the bed in whispers. Sometimes Geraldine would start up and call for water; sometimes would make violent efforts to leave the bed--efforts which it took all my strength to resist. As the time went on she grew worse. She talked incessantly, a mad wild talk, fragmentary as the mutterings of a dream--at intervals raising her voice to a shriek then lowering it to a breathless whisper. What visions passed before those vacant eyes of hers God only knows! But terrible they must have been; terrible the scenes they enacted; for she plunged wildly, as seeking to disperse them, then wailed entreaties to them to vanish, whilst her body shook with strong tremors and the hand which I held grew wet as though dipped in water. The morning paled upon the window-blinds and made the candle-flame sickly. The birds twittered and distant cocks sang to one another their early defiance. Presently I heard the sound of wheels; Mrs. Williams left the room, and returned some minutes after, ushering in Dr. Sandwin.