Three weeks passed. Still sullenly enraged
with him, she would not give up the knife;
and still that fear of sleeping in the same
room with her, possessed him. He walked
about at night, or dozed in the parlour, or sat
watching by his mother's bed-side. Before the
expiration of the first week in the new month
his mother died. It wanted then but ten
days' of her son's birthday. She had longed
to live till that anniversary. Isaac was
present at her death; and her last words in this
world were addressed to him: "Don't go
back, my son, don't go back!"

He was obliged to go back, if it were only to
watch his wife. Exasperated to the last
degree by his distrust of her, she had revengefully
sought to add a sting to his grief, during
the last days of his mother's illness, by
declaring that she would assert her right to
attend the funeral. In spite of all that he
could do, or say, she held with wicked
pertinacity to her word; and, on the day
appointed for the burial, forced herself—
inflamed and shameless with drink—into her
husband's presence, and declared that she
would walk in the funeral procession to his
mother's grave.

This last worst outrage, accompanied by all
that was most insulting in word and look,
maddened him for the moment. He struck her.
The instant the blow was dealt, he repented
it. She crouched down, silent in a corner
of the room, and eyed him steadily; it was a
look that cooled his hot blood, and made him
tremble. But there was no time now to
think of a means of making atonement.
Nothing remained, but to risk the worst till
the funeral was over. There was but one way
of making sure of her. He locked her into
her bed-room.

When he came back some hours after, he
found her sitting, very much altered in look
and bearing, by the bedside, with a bundle on
her lap. She rose, and faced him quietly, and
spoke with a strange stillness in her voice, a
strange repose in her eyes, a strange composure
in her manner.

"No man has ever struck me twice," she
said, " and my husband shall have no second
opportunity. Set the door open and let me
go. From this day forth we see each other
no more."

Before he could answer she passed him,
and left the room. He saw her walk away up
the street.

Would she return? All that night he
watched and waited; but no footstep came
near the house. The next night, overpowered
by fatigue, he lay down in bed, in his clothes,
with the door locked, the key on the table,
and the candle burning. His slumber was not
disturbed. The third night, the fourth,
the fifth, the sixth, passed, and nothing
happened. He lay down on the seventh,
still in his clothes, still with the door locked,
the key on the table, and the candle burning;
but easier in his mind.

Easier in his mind, and in perfect health of
body, when he fell off to sleep. But his rest
was disturbed. He woke twice, without any
sensation of uneasiness. But the third time
it was that never-to-be-forgotten shivering of
the night at the lonely inn, that dreadful
sinking pain at the heart, which once more
aroused him in an instant.

His eyes opened towards the left hand side
of the bed, and there stood—The woman

of the dream, again?—No! His wife; the
living reality, with the dream-spectre's face
—in the dream-spectre's attitude; the fair
arm up—the knife clasped in the delicate,
white hand.

He sprang upon her, almost at the instant
of seeing her, and yet not quickly enough to
prevent her from hiding the knife. Without
a word from him—without a cry from her—
he pinioned her in a chair. With one hand
he felt up her sleeve—and, there, where the
dream-woman had hidden the knife, she had
hidden it,—the knife with the buck-horn
handle, that looked like new.

In the despair of that fearful moment his
brain was steady, his heart was calm. He
looked at her fixedly, with the knife in his
hand, and said these last words:

"You told me we should see each other no
more, and you have come back. It is my
turn, now, to go, and to go for ever. I say
that we shall see each other no more; and
my word shall not be broken."

He left her, and set forth into the night.
There was a bleak wind abroad, and the
smell of recent rain was in the air. The
distant church-clocks chimed the quarter as
he walked rapidly beyond the last
houses in the suburb. He asked the first
policeman he met, what hour that was, of
which the quarter past had just struck.

The man referred sleepily to his watch,
and answered: " Two o'clock." Two in the
morning. What day of the month was this
day that had just begun? He reckoned it
up from the date of his mother's funeral.
The fatal parallel was complete—it was his
birthday!

Had he escaped the mortal peril which his
dream foretold? or had he only received a
second warning? As that ominous doubt
forced itself on his mind, he stopped,
reflected, and turned back again towards the
city. He was still resolute to hold to his
word, and never to let her see him more; but
there was a thought now in his mind of having
her watched and followed. The knife
was in his possession—the world was before
him; but a new distrust of her—a vague, un-
speakable, superstitious dread—had overcome
him.

"I must know where she goes, now she
thinks I have left her," he said to himself,
as he stole back wearily to the precincts of
his house.

It was still dark. He had left the candle
burning in the bedchamber: but when he