With a gasp she began to recover herself; but she felt too faint and ill to get up and commence a retreat towards Redman's Farm. Besides, she was sure he would return--she could not tell how soon--and although the clump of alders hid her from view, she could not tell but that the next moment would disclose his figure retracing his leisurely steps, and ready to pursue and overtake, if by a precipitate movement she had betrayed her presence. In due time the same figure, passing at the same rate, did emerge again, and approached just as before, only this time he was carelessly examining some small but clumsy steel instrument which glittered occasionally in the light. From Tamar's description of it, I conclude it was a revolver. He passed the pile of cloaks but a few steps, and again turned toward Brandon. So soon as he was once more concealed by the screen of underwood, old Tamar, now sufficiently recovered, crept hurriedly away in the opposite direction, half dead with terror, until she had descended the steps, and was buried once more in friendly darkness. Old Tamar did not stop at Redman's Farm; she passed it and the mills, and never stopped till she reached the Vicarage. In the hall, she felt for a moment quite overpowered, and sitting in one of the old chairs that did duty there, she uttered a deep groan, and looked with such a gaze in the face of the maid who had admitted her, that she thought the old woman was dying. Sick rooms, even when, palpably, doctors, nurses, friends, have all ceased to hope, are not to those who stand in the _very_ nearest and most tender relations to the patient, altogether chambers of despair. There are those who hover about the bed and note every gleam and glow of subsiding life, and will read in sunset something of the colours of the dawn, and cling wildly to these hallucinations of love; and no one has the heart to tear them from them. Just now, Dolly fancied that 'little man was better--the darling! the treasure! oh, precious little man! He was coming back!' So, she ran down with this light of hope in her face, and saw old Tamar in the hall, and gave her a glass of the wine which Rachel had provided, and the old woman's spirit came again. 'She was glad--yes, very glad. She was thankful to hear the dear child was better.' But there was a weight upon her soul, and a dreadful horror on her countenance still. 'Will you please, Ma'am, write a little note--my old hand shakes so, she could hardly read my writing--to my mistress--Miss Radie, Ma'am. I see pen and ink on the table there. I was not able to go up to the Hall, Ma'am, with the message. There's something on the road I could not pass.' 'Something! What was it?' said Dolly, staring with round eyes in the old woman's woeful face, her curiosity aroused for a moment.