Miriam's hand tightened its grasp on the curtain and she leaned weakly against the side of the bed; but for its support her trembling knees would have given way under her. She had been the victim of a nightmare! The midnight visit of Betty Carter and the clergyman, the substitution of a stranger for her patient--all had been a hallucination conjured up by a too vivid imagination. She had slept on duty. That, in itself, was an unpardonable offense. Raising her arm she glanced at her wrist watch--the hands registered a quarter past eight. Then nearly nine hours had passed and she had lain asleep. A wave of color suffused her white face and she grew hot and cold by turns. Her heart was beating with suffocating rapidity as she hurried to the windows and drew aside the long, heavy curtains and pulled up the Holland shades. The storm of the night before was over and the winter sunshine brought a touch of warmth to the room and a sense of comfort. A glance at the fireplace convinced Miriam that it would require both time and fresh kindling wood to start a fire. It could wait until she had summoned the caretaker; the room was not so cold now that she had closed the window. Retracing her footsteps she again paused by the bed and gazed at her patient. He still lay on his side, motionless. Miriam Ward caught her breath--motionless, aye, too motionless. A certain rigidity, a waxen pallor, indistinguishable in her first glimpse of him in the darkened room, held her eyes, trained to detect the slightest alteration in a patient's condition. Her hand sought his wrist, then his heart, then dropped limply to her side. Paul Abbott lay dead before her. Her low cry was smothered in the bed curtain, which she pressed against her mouth, and for a moment she swayed dizzily upon her feet. Paul Abbott had died while she lay asleep within a few feet of his bed. Overwhelming remorse deadened every other feeling and held her spellbound. Fully five minutes elapsed before a sense of duty aroused her to action. Wheeling around, Miriam staggered rather than walked to the telephone standing on Abbott's desk. She had jotted down Doctor Roberts' 'phone call the night before, but it took her several seconds to get the central at Washington, and still others passed before a man's voice told her that the physician was out making his morning rounds. At her urgent request the servant promised to locate Doctor Roberts and send him at once to Abbott's Lodge. As Miriam replaced the receiver on its hook she was conscious of a feeling of deadly nausea and she stumbled as she walked across the room and into the hall. She must have aid. Her repeated calls brought no response. What had become of the caretaker and his wife? A noise of some one moving in the hall below caused her to run down the staircase to the lower landing.