When Horace's wandering, feeble glance fell upon his uncle, a great cloud and shadow came over him even in the calm of his weakness. Everything came back to him in that first glimpse of Uncle Edward's face. He shut his eyes tightly again, with a longing to return to his insensibility, and gave a groan out of the depths of his miserable heart. He was cured--his fever was over: he had come back to life, with its agonies worse than fever. The very sound of that groan gave signal of recovery to the watcher by his side. "You must keep quiet, Horace; you are better: you will soon be well, if you take care. And here is something you are to take," said the Colonel. "Hush! compose yourself, you live; and God is in heaven, and all will be well!" But Horace did not answer; he kept his eyes shut for another bitter moment, gathering up the threads of his scattered recollections. Then the last incident of all returned to him--he was innocent!--so he said to himself, with a natural human casuistry; innocent! though it was in spite of himself. Innocent! at least, not guilty by the actual event. Then he opened his eyes and took the medicine, which his uncle had poured out for him. He was the same Horace as of old--subdued, but not changed; and in the sudden recollection that he was not a parricide, a rush of his old self-assertion returned to his awakening mind, and of his old sullen look to his face. But he did not say anything for the moment--he sunk back again upon his pillows, weak to extremity; almost the only sign of life in him being that uneasy guiltiness in his heart, which even the discovery, which had released him from the weight of murder, could only salve, and could not cure. But he was uneasy, too, with the Colonel's grave, grieved, conscious face beside him--he could not help saying something. He remembered so distinctly now the study and all its familiar objects, the medicine-chest standing on the table; somebody must have brought him from that place where he lost consciousness, to this where he regained it. "Uncle, who found me?" he said, shutting his eyes once more, unable to bear that grieved look of knowledge which was in the Colonel's eyes. "_I_ found you, Horace," said Colonel Sutherland, quietly; "let your mind be quite at rest, no one else came near us. I put away the little medicine-chest," he continued, with hesitation, "and the paper which dropped out of it. They are locked up in one of your drawers; no one has either seen or touched them but myself." Then there was a long, conscious pause; neither the sick man nor the watcher spoke--the one contending with his natural sullen pride, which would confess no sin, and the horror within him of knowing that so far as intention and purpose went he was as guilty as any actual murderer; the other grieved, silent, afraid, anxious _not_ to hear that some diabolical purpose had been nursed in that young head, yet sadly fearing that, whether confessed or not, the wickedness had been there.