moving down the path of the moonlight— stopped
at the fifth window—turned once more— and came
on softly through the shadow, straight to the place
where Magdalen stood.

Her voice was dumb; her will was helpless.
Every sense in her but the seeing-sense, was
paralysed. The seeing-sense— held fast in the
fetters of its own terror— looked unchangeably
straightforward, as it had looked from the first.
There she stood in the doorway, full in the path
of the figure advancing on her through the
shadow, nearer and nearer, step by step.

It came close.

The bonds of horror that held her, burst
asunder when it was within arm's length. She
started back. The light of the candle on the
table fell full on its face, and showed her
—Admiral Bartram.

A long grey dressing-gown was wrapped round
him. His head was uncovered; his feet were
bare. In his left hand, he carried his little
basket of keys. He passed Magdalen slowly;
his lips whispering without intermission; his
open eyes staring straight before him, with the
glassy stare of death. His eyes revealed to her
the terrifying truth. He was walking in his
sleep.

The terror of seeing him, as she saw him now,
was not the terror she had felt when her eyes
first lighted on him—an apparition in the
moonlight, a spectre in the ghostly Hall. This time,
she could struggle against the shock; she could
feel the depth of her own fear.

He passed her, and stopped in the middle of
the room. Magdalen ventured near enough to
him to be within reach of his voice, as he
muttered to himself. She ventured nearer still, and
heard the name of her dead husband fall
distinctly from the sleep-walker's lips.

"Noel!" he said, in the low, monotonous tones
of a dreamer talking in his sleep. " My good
fellow, Noel, take it back again! It worries me
day and night. I don't know where it's safe; I
don't know where to put it. Take it back, Noel
—take it back!"

As those words escaped him, he walked to the
buhl cabinet. He sat down in the chair placed
before it, and searched in the basket among his
keys. Magdalen softly followed him, and stood
behind his chair, waiting, with the candle in her
hand. He found the key, and unlocked the cabinet.
Without an instant's hesitation, he drew out a
drawer, the second of a row. The one thing in
drawer, was a folded letter. He removed
it, and put it down before him on the table.
"Take it back, Noel!" he repeated, mechanically;
"take it back!"

Magdalen looked over his shoulder, and read
these lines, traced in her husband's handwriting,
at the top of the letter:— To be kept
in your own possession, and to be opened by
yourself only, on the day of my decease. Noel
Vanstone. She saw the words plainly, with the
admiral's name and the admiral's address written
under them.

The Trust within reach of her hand! The
Trust traced to its hiding-place at last!

She took one step forward, to steal round his
chair, and to snatch the letter from the table.
At the instant when she moved, he took it up
once more; locked the cabinet; and, rising,
turned and faced her.

In the impulse of the moment she stretched
out her hand towards the hand in which he held
the letter. The yellow candlelight fell full on
him. The awful death-in-life of his face— the
mystery of the sleeping body moving in unconscious
obedience to the dreaming mind— daunted
her. Her hand trembled, and dropped again at
her side.

He dropped the key of the cabinet into the
basket; and crossed the room to the bureau, with
the basket in one hand, and the letter in the
other. Magdalen put the candle back on the
table, and watched him. As he had opened the
cabinet, so he now opened the bureau. Once
more, Magdalen stretched out her hand; and
once more she recoiled before the mystery and
the terror of his sleep. He put the letter in a
drawer, at the back of the bureau, and closed the
heavy oaken lid again. " Yes," he said. " Safer
there, as you say, Noel—safer there." So he
spoke. So, time after time, the words that
betrayed him, revealed the dead man, living and
speaking again in the dream.

Had he locked the bureau? Magdalen had not
heard the lock turn. As he slowly moved away,
walking back once more towards the middle of
the room, she tried the lid. It was locked. That
discovery made, she looked to see what he was
doing next. He was leaving the room again,
with his basket of keys in his hand. When her
first glance overtook him, he was crossing the
threshold of the door.

Some inscrutable fascination possessed her;
some mysterious attraction drew her after him,
in spite of herself. She took up the candle, and
followed him mechanically, as if she too were
walking in her sleep. One behind the other,
in slow and noiseless progress, they crossed the
Banqueting-Hall. One behind the other, they
passed through the drawing-room, and along the
corridor, and up the stairs. She followed him to
his own door. He went in, and shut it behind him,
softly. She stopped, and looked towards the
truckle-bed. It was pushed aside at the foot,
some little distance away from the bedroom door.
Who had moved it? She held the candle close,
and looked towards the pillow, with a sudden
curiosity and a sudden doubt.

The truckle-bed was empty.

The discovery startled her for the moment,
and for the moment only. Plain as the
inferences were to be drawn from it, she never
drew them. Her mind, slowly recovering the
exercise of its faculties, was still under the
influence of the earlier and the deeper impressions
produced on it. Her mind followed the admiral
into his room, as her body had followed him
across the Banqueting-Hall.