again while she stood trembling, wondering; and then, with a cry, Winifred flew along the corridor. Mr. Chester’s room was in the wing, at some distance from the other sleeping-rooms of the house. Everything was silent, an atmosphere of profound sleep, calm tranquillity in the dim air, through which the night-lamp in the hall below burned with a weird glimmer. The blueness of the dawn in its faint pervasion seemed more ghostly than the night. As Winifred hurried along, another door opened with a hasty sound, and old Hopkins stumbled forth. “What is it, Miss Winifred?” She had no breath to reply. She put him before her, trembling as they reached Mr. Chester’s door. She was terrified by the thoughts of what she might see. But there was nothing that was terrible to see. A voice came out of the curtains, querulous, with an outburst of abuse at old Hopkins, who never could be made to hear. “Send for Langton,” Mr. Chester said. “It’s the middle of the night, please sir,” old Hopkins replied. “Send for Langton,” repeated the voice. It had a curious stammer in it; a sibilant sound. “S--s--send for Langton,” with another torrent of exclamations. The old butler hurried out of the room, muttering to himself, “It will be half an hour before I can wake one of those grooms, and he’ll take the skin off me before that. Miss Winifred, oh, it’s only the doctor he wants; it’s nothing out of the common!” “I will go,” she said. “You? But it’s the middle of the night, and not a soul awake.” “Is he very ill? Tell me the truth. I will go quicker than any one else.” “Miss Winifred, you’ve no call to be frightened. He’s been the same fifty times. He don’t want the doctor no more than I do. Oh, goodness, there he is at it again!” Then the bell sent a wild, irritated peal into the air, which evidently ended abruptly in the breaking of the bell-rope.