"Nothing; or at least something has gone against my--breath. What am I wanted for at the Castle?" Still he spoke as if half suffocated. Still he kept his face to the window. Still his face was wrinkled and yellow and withered up. "I met Dr. Hardy as I came in. He had just driven straight back from the Castle. There has been a consultation of doctors to-day, and they have little or no hope of Sir Alexander getting better. He has not yet made his will, and they all agreed you were the only person likely to have any influence with him. They could get him to do nothing about it." Grey's face cleared as if by magic. He turned round suddenly, threw up both his hands, and burst into a loud and continuous shout of laughter. His mother started to her feet, and looked at him aghast. "Henry!" she cried, in great alarm; "Henry, what is the matter?" "Nothing, mother, nothing," he said between his laughter; "I thought it was something serious." She regarded him in a stupor of amazement for a few seconds. "You thought it was something serious," she whispered, as if she questioned her hearing. "Yes, something very serious." "But it is very serious. He is in danger of death, and has not yet made his will. Surely that, Henry, is no subject for laughter." He was composed now. His face was radiant, and he smiled apologetically as he said: "You must really forgive me, dear mother. The fact is, for the past quarter of an hour I have been on such a stretch in the interview between us that to hear of anything else but my own affairs relieved me, and I could not help laughing. I did not, indeed, laugh at the thought of poor Sir Alexander being ill; I pity him with all my heart. But what you said touched some spring of my mind, and I could no more have forborne to laugh than to breathe for an hour. Well, I think I had better start for the Island at once. You now feel all right about the Bank? You feel quite comfortable about it, mother, don't you?" "Yes, but do not be so odd, Henry; you frighten me to death with your strange ways of late." "I have a good deal of anxiety, and perhaps am too abrupt. More of my abruptness: I can't wait another moment. Good-bye, mother." And in a few seconds he had gone. When she found herself alone, she sat down to recover and to reflect. "Every day," she thought, "he becomes less like his old self, and more of a riddle." Her eyes caught something on the table. "When I came in he told me he was examining that dreadful thing because he was going on a journey, and now he's gone off and left it behind him in the bag on that table. Can it be he is losing his reason?" When Mr. Grey found himself outside the Bank-door he hailed the nearest fly, jumped in, and cried cheerily to the driver: "Island Ferry, and I lay you a half-crown to a whip-lash you don't do it under half an hour. Take the time and drive on."