A day or two brought me an acknowledgment and answer to my letter. The latter shall forever remain sacred from any eyes but mine; and, unless man can be found ready to brave the curse of the dead, shall lie with me, who alone have read it, in the grave. On the morning preceding that of its arrival, a fearful experience befell me, that was like to have choked out my soul then and there in one black grip of horror. All that first day after Jason’s visit my father lay abed, and, whenever I visited him, was cheerfully garrulous, but without any inclination to rise. The following morning also he elected to have breakfast as before in his room; and soon after the meal he fell into a light doze, in which state I left him. It was about 11 o’clock that, sitting in the room below, I was startled by hearing a sudden thud above me that shook the beams of the ceiling. I rushed upstairs in a panic and found him lying prostrate on the floor, uninjured apparently, but with no power of getting to his feet again. “What’s this?” I cried. “Dad! Are you hurt?” He looked at me a little wondering and confused, but answered no, he had only slipped and fallen when rising to don his clothes. I lifted him up and he couldn’t stand, but sunk down on the bed again with a blank, amazed look in his face. “Renalt,” he said, in a thin, perplexed voice, “what’s happened to the old man? The will was there, but the power’s gone.” Gone it was, forever. From that day he walked no more--did nothing but lie on his back, calm and unconcerned for the most part, and fading quietly from life. But in the first discovery of his enforced inertness, some peculiar trouble, unconnected with the certain approach of death, lay on him like a black jaundice. Sitting by his side after I had got him back upon the bed, I would not break the long silence that ensued with shallow words of comfort, for I thought that he was steeling his poor soul as he lay to face the inevitable prospect. Suddenly he turned on the bed--for his face had been darkened from me--and looked at me with his lips trembling. “What is it, dad?” “I’m down, Renny. I shall never rise again.” “You’ll rest, dad; you’ll rest. Think of the peace and quiet while I sit and read to you and the sun comes in at the window.” “Good lad! It isn’t that, though rest has a beautiful sound to me. It’s the thought--harkee, Renny! It’s the thought that a task I’ve not failed in for twenty years and more must come to be another’s.” “What task?” “There are ears in the walls. Closer, my son. The task of oiling the wheel below.” “Shall I take it up, dad? Is that your wish?” I answered stoutly, though my heart sunk within me at the prospect. “You or nobody, it must be. Are you afraid?” “I wish I could say I wasn’t.” He clutched my hand in tremulous eagerness.