I did not go back to my room, but sat on a stair at the head of the downward flight, with a strange, stunned feeling. Below the voices went on spasmodically--now a long murmur--now a snatch of song--now an angry phrase. By and by, I think, I must have fallen into a sort of stupor, for I seemed to wake all at once to a thunderous uproar. I started to my feet. Magnified as all sounds are in the moment of recovered consciousness, there was yet noise enough below to convince me that a violent quarrel between the two men was toward. I heard my father’s voice in bitter denunciation. “You’ve been hawking over my quarry this long while. I’ll tear the truth out of your long throat! Give me back my cameo--where is it?” “A fig for your cameo!” cried the other in a shrill voice, “and I tell you this is the first I’ve heard of it.” “You’ve been watching me, you fiend, you! Dogging me--haunting me! I’ll have no more o’t! I’m not to be bribed or threatened or coaxed any more; least of all thieved from. Where is it?” “You aren’t, aren’t you?” screeched the doctor. “You leave me here and I fall asleep. You’re away and you come storming back that I’ve robbed you. It’s a trap, by thunder, but you won’t catch me in it!” “I believe you’re lying!” cried my father. His voice seemed strained with passion. But the other answered him now much more coolly. “Believe what you like, my friend. It’s beneath my dignity to contradict you again; but take this for certain--if you slander me in public, I’ll ruin you!” Then silence fell and I waited to hear no more. I stole to my room and crept to bed. I had never changed my drenched clothes and the deadly chill of my limbs was beginning to overcome the frost in my heart. It seemed hours before the horrible coldness relaxed, and then straightway a parching fever scorched me as if I lay against a furnace. I heard sounds and dull footsteps and the ghostly creaking of stairs, but did not know if they were real or only incidents in my half-delirium. At last as day was breaking I fell into a heavy, exhausted sleep. It merged into a dream of my younger brother. We walked together as we had done as little children, my arm around his neck. “Zenny,” he said, like a baby paraphrasing Zyp’s words, “what’s ’ove dat ’ey talk about?” I could have told him in the gushing of my heart, but in a moment he ran from me and faded. I gave a cry and woke, and Jason was standing over me, with a white, scared face. “Get up!” he whispered; “Modred’s dead!” CHAPTER IX. THE FACE ON THE PILLOW. Often the first shock of some unexpected mental blow shakes from the soul, not its corresponding emotion, but that emotion’s exact antithesis. Thus, when Jason spoke I laughed. I could not on the moment believe that such hideous retribution was demanded of my already writhed and repentant conscience, and it seemed to me that he must be jesting in very ugly fashion. Perhaps he looked astonished; anyhow he said: