This letter, with others directed to Louie, from Merivale, Fred put away, waiting for the time when she would understand their contents, if that time ever came. She was very ill, and every day seemed going lower down into the shadow of death. From the first she was delirious and talked of the failure, and the hours passed with her father in the bank listening to the angry roar of the crowd outside; of the wild, rainy night when she faced the Session alone, while Herbert sat on the dry-goods box in the hall. Once she spoke of a young man with a bullet in his brain and his half-open eyes staring at her as they did at her father, but only Fred heard her, and he did not understand. From her ravings he learned more of what she had passed through than Mr. Blake had told them, and his great, kind heart yearned with sympathy and pity for the young girl who seemed so crushed and broken and ashamed. She dwelt a great deal upon that, as if she in some way were to blame for what had happened. “We didn’t suspect the truth or we would have lived differently,” she said, “but I shall pay it all.” Sometimes it seemed to dawn upon her that she might never be able to pay the debts; then she would wring her hands and cry piteously, “Who will do it, if I can’t?” Once, when alone with her, and her plaintive cry, “Who will do it?” was repeated again and again, Fred bent so close to her that her hot, feverish breath stirred his hair, and said, “Louie! Louie!” He had always called her Miss Grey, and now, at the sound of her old familiar name, she opened her eyes, bright with delirium, and asked, “Who is calling me Louie, as they used to do so long ago?” “I,” Fred answered her, “Fred Lansing. Don’t you know me?” “I don’t quite think I do,” she said, with her eyes still fixed upon him. “You seem a little like Herbert. I knew him long ago, in the woods and on the river, and everywhere. But that is all over, and I gave him back the ring, which I never wore, for fear of his father, you know.” “Yes, I know,” Fred said, taking the hot hands which were beating the air. “I know; and, Louie, don’t be troubled about those debts. I will pay them all if you never can. Be quiet now and get well.” “Yes, get well, so as to sing. That’s what I must do; and I am so tired, and the keys in my throat are all out of tune. Listen,” and she tried a few notes of her famous bird-song on which so much depended. At first her voice was clear as a canary’s, and some like it, and then it broke and died away in a faint, gurgling sound pitiful to hear. “What a discord!” she said, with a laugh which was half a cry; “and hark! how the people hiss and jeer, when I expected applause. I can’t do it. I can’t.” This was her cry many times a day, as she tried to sing, and always broke down with the sobbing words, “I can’t, I can’t! There is something choking me, and they hiss me so for my father. I didn’t know it. I was not to blame, and he was so sorry for it all.”