of sighs and tears, and show the brighter land beyond. It must indeed be a blissful privilege to bring joy to our departing brother, while his dreary eyes look out for the last time on earth, to open again to bliss in heaven."

These words were said fervently, and without any appearance of cant. No wonder if the honest, simple-hearted rector was charmed with Doctor Malyon.

"I should like to see Miss Gertrude," he said, "and give what comfort I can to the poor dear child; also, if Sir Hugh

He paused in great alarm, for a screama woman's scream-shrill and piercing, rung through the house.

Both

men, with faces of alarm, turned to dim and ghost-like Mrs. Bleek, who flung

open the door of the room.

"It's Miss Gertrude!" she cried; "and she's in Sir Hugh's room!"

The rector and doctor passed hurriedly out, Mrs. Bleek following; then, muttering as she did so, with uplifted, shadowy hands, "If signs and omens are worth anything, there's another of the Wentworths gone!"

CHAPTER XVI.

GERTRUDE.

To explain the sudden alarm of the Wentworth household-for the entire household was now afoot, and hurrying to Sir Hugh's room-we must go back a little while, and visit Miss Gertrude in her chamber.

Weak-very weak, and nervously ill, she had left her bed, and after despatching, by means of Mrs. Bleek, her pencilled note to the rector, had dressed herself, much against the old housekeeper's wish, the latter knowing nothing of the contents of the note.

"When the heart's heavy and the head's weak, bed's the best place. Lawks 'a mercy, miss! there's no place like it, to them," she added, with a dreary reservation, "as ain't troubled with dreams, which I am!"

"It is sometimes possible to dream out of bed as well as in it," said Gertrude, with a sad smile.

“Well, that be true, too," assented the housekeeper cheerfully, if anything cheerful could be connected with Mrs. Bleek. "With me, dreams is second natur'. The people as I do see when I'm wide awake, and them dead and gone, is to me miracles. Only the other night, I thought I saw my poor dead husband when I was a-crossin' the stack-yard, but it was only the moonlight as was shining on a donkey browsing on a thistle."

"Where's that Mrs. Prudence?" asked

Gertrude, with, for her, an unusual sharp

ness.

She had not been listening to Mrs. Bleek, but was engaged mechanically tracing some figures of flowers on paper.

"She's everywhere, I think," said the housekeeper, drawing nearer to her young mistress, and speaking in a whisper. "Little bit of a body as she is, this place is full of her. I hate her! Not that she gives wilful offence to any one—not she— but I can't move a dozen yards, here, there, or elsewhere, but her red eyes are gleaming at my elbow."

"I hate her, too," said Gertrude quietly. “I never thought I could hate anybody, but I hate that woman-hate and fear her."

"Well," and poor Mrs. Bleek became immediately confidential, "and so do I. She's to me a sort of continual shiver. If