“Let me alone, Gipsy Darke! You shall not drag me down to your watery grave! What a splash there was when I pushed her over the brink! I hope the sound did not come to any one’s ears. I am afraid to go back to the house alone. What if I met some one? But my disguise is perfect. I am afraid there is blood on my hands. It ran from her in streams!” She held up her beautiful white hands in horror before her staring eyes. “They are quite red--quite red! I must wash off the stain before Laurie comes back!” “This is terrible! She must be aroused from her dreadful dream, poor child! Lelia! Lelia!” “Do not touch her, you only make her rave more wildly and loudly!” Laurie told him, but the alarmed old man would not desist. He leaned over and stroked her hair, her face, her hands. He called her tender names of endearment. She clutched him viciously, hissing: “Give me the ring! It is mine, I tell you! How dared Laurie give you my engagement-ring? I will have it, or I will murder you!” Her white hands clutched the old man’s hair; she dragged it out by handfuls. She reached out, as for a weapon, and kept striking his head in a hideous pantomime, terribly revolting. Laurie interposed to release his father, and the old man, somewhat worsted in the struggle, was glad enough to leave the frenzied somnambulist alone. “This is awful. She is like a maniac, poor creature. It must be an attack of brain-fever. You should call the doctor at once,” he sputtered weakly. “No, no!” cried an expostulating voice. It was Mrs. Ritchie, who had been listening outside the door. Hearing the general’s voice, she came in, pale and alarmed, to Lelia, who had sunk down speechless among the pillows. “It was only a dream, my dear general. She has been like this night after night since the tragedy, but in the day she is quite herself, and wonders with me over her strange hallucination. It is simply a case of overwrought nerves, brought on by her keen sympathies and the horrors we have undergone. I think Laurie ought to take her away to-morrow for rest and change of scene,” the mother said anxiously. “She should spend a few weeks first in a sanatorium,” the old soldier returned bluntly, chafing under the loss of the handful of gray locks clutched in Lelia’s writhing white fingers. He should be almost bald on top now, and his vanity had always been hurt at the very idea. “I object to the sanatorium most decidedly,” cried the other. “See, she is all right again! The spell is over. It was the worst she has had, but she will be quiet now.” She moved toward the door, as a gentle hint to the general that both should retire, but suddenly she paused. Lelia was sitting up in bed again, staring wildly as before, muttering disjointed words.