“Oh, boy, boy! cannot ye see?” cried Janet. She put forth a long trembling finger and thrust it at the paper, pointing to the date. Fred looked and read. He read it a second time aloud, a strange terror growing upon him: “June 3, 18--.” “Why,” he said, “why----.” Then, stammering and stumbling over the words, broke down. “Why, why,” he began again with a laugh, “we cannot all be mad and going to Bedlam! It’s this year: June 3, 18--.” The old woman grasped him by both his hands. “It’s this year--and we’re no mad, though often, often I’ve felt on the edge of it. We’re no mad,” she repeated, “and it’s this year, and the man that wrote that is in the house this blessed night, Mr. Fred!” God help the lad! He had but turned his black and terrible countenance upon her, holding the letter helplessly in his hands, when there sounded through the house, cutting the silence like a knife, a sudden wild cry, a shriek, lasting only for a second, but piercing to the heart of the night, to the heart of the house, like some sudden horrible event. It was followed almost immediately after by a rush of muffled feet along the passage: the door was pushed open violently, yet silently, and someone came in like a shot from a pistol, as sudden and unexpected. Fred felt himself shrink towards the wall in his horror and amaze. It was a man who had come in--a man with a beard which covered half his face, yet showed a curious kind of smile coming out of the midst of it, though the eyes were full of an almost tragic seriousness. Fred had fallen back against the wall as this new-comer appeared. The room swam round and round in his eyes, a darkness came over him, he saw nothing for a moment: then slowly came to himself, and saw again, within reach of him, so near that he could have touched him, this man--whom he had never seen before. Oh, could he but have been sure that he had never seen him before! His heart stopped beating--and then with a flutter and a spring went on again, as if it would have leaped out of his breast. The shock of the supernatural, the horror of an awful discovery, came into the young man’s brain and almost paralysed it as they clashed together. Ah, had it been but the supernatural! But as that face emerged out of the mist, Fred saw that it was that of a living man--and that he heard it talking--_it_--as living men do. “You have told him, Janet?” “No a moment too soon--just as you were coming. Let the laddie be, let him come to himself. And what was it you were doing? Did she--or you----?” “I have given her a fright that will put a stop to that,” he said, with a strange laugh, hard and harsh: and then he flung himself into a chair, throwing off a dark cloak in which he had been wrapped from head to foot. He added after a moment with a groan, “The way of transgressors is hard!” and hid his face in his hands.