“I think, ma’am, there is a change,” the nurse said, as Mary noiselessly but swiftly, as long nursing teaches women to move, came into the room. The nurse was an experienced person. When Miss Brown, and even Mary herself, had seen “a change,” or fancied they had seen it, before, nurse had never said so. It was the first time she had called any one to the Squire’s room, or made the slightest movement of alarm. She led the way now to the bedside. The patient was lying in much the same attitude as before, but he was moving his hands restlessly, his lips were moving, and his head on the pillow. “He is saying something, but I cannot make out what it is,” the nurse said. Mary put her ear close to the inarticulate mouth. How dreadful was that living prison of flesh!--living, yet dead--the spirit pent up and denied all its usual modes of utterance. Mary wrung her hands with a sense of the intolerable as she tried in vain to distinguish the words, which seemed to be repeated over and over again, though they could make nothing of them. “Cannot you help us?--can you make it out? Is there nothing we can do?” she cried; “no cordial to give him strength?” but the nurse could only shake her head, and the doctor when he came was equally helpless. He told Mary it was a sign of returning consciousness--which, indeed, was evident enough--but could not even say whether this promised for or against recovery. The nurse, it was clear, did not think it a good sign. He might even recover his speech _at the end_, she said. And hours passed while they waited, watching closely lest any faint beginning of sound should struggle through. The whole night was passed in this way. Mary never left the bedside. It was not that he could say anything of great importance to any one but himself. The Squire was helpless as respected his estate. It was entailed, and went to his eldest son, whether he liked it or not; and his will was made long ago, and all his affairs settled. What he had to say could not much affect any one; but of all pitiful sights, it seemed to his daughter the most pitiful, to see this old man, always so entirely master of himself, trying to make some communication which all their anxiety could not decipher. Could he be himself aware of how it was that no response was made to him?--could he realise the horror of the position?--something urgent to say, and no way of getting to the ears of those concerned, notwithstanding their most anxious attention? “No, no,” the nurse said; “he’s all in a maze; he maybe don’t even know what he’s saying;” and the constant movement and evident repetition gave favour to this idea. Mary stood by him, and looked at him, however, with a pain as great as if he had been consciously labouring on one side to express himself as she was on the other to understand him, instead of lying, as was most probable, in a feverish dream, through which some broken gleam of fancy or memory struggled. When the chilly dawn broke upon the long night, that