"You are stark mad, Carl, and do not know
what you say!"

"I do know what I say. Let me be!"
he shook himself roughly, but Robin did not
move his hand, for there was a dangerous
glitter in Carl's eyes as if he longed to spring
on and throttle him. At this instant a
second knock was heard at the street door,
which caused Carl to cower down pale and
trembling, as if he would hide himself. Some
one ascended the stairs, Alice opened the
door, and a large foreign-looking man entered.
"Mr. Carl is here?" he observed; then
whispered to Robin that he had a word for
his private ear. "You will stay here a
minute, Mr. Carl," he added, lifting a
forefinger in a menacing way;" Madame will
keep you company till we return." They
passed into the adjoining room.

"Mr. Carl escaped us yesterday, sir. You
will have discovered that he is mad?" said the
stranger;" you will allow us to remove him?"

Robin looked disconcerted. "Mad! yes, I
suppose he is—indeed, of course he is. There can
be no doubt of it—" he replied, hesitatingly.

"O, he cannot be with any one an hour
without betraying it unmistakeably. It is
possible that he may have told you his fancies?"

"Yes," said Robin, and paused. The
man was watching his countenance closely.

"Absurd self-accusations, eh?" questioned
the man, who, spite of his foreign air, spoke
English with the native accent. "I see, he
has startled you, sir; you were inclined to
believe that he really did murder his venerable
father and that woman? It is his
mania. I have heard him confess all the
imaginary circumstances with a wonderful
air of reality; but just in the same way I
have heard him confess to other deeds, to
killing you, for instance, and a girl called
Alice, and a variety of thefts, in the most
circumstantial manner. His mind—what he
has left of it, at least—runs perpetually on
murder."

Robin drew a long breath. "How is
it that he is under your care?" he asked
the stranger.

"Sir, I am a physician; some time since—
two years—Mr. Carl Branston placed
himself in my hands, and I undertook to protect
him against himself. His lucid intervals are
few and short. Yesterday morning he was
tolerably well, and while walking in the
grounds of my house, must have suddenly
conceived the design of an escape; but he was
easily traced."

"It will be a satisfaction to me to have
him near London," said Robin; " I should
like to see that his unhappy condition is as
much ameliorated as it can be."

"Naturally, sir; but there would be risk
of his babblings—marvellously truthful they
sound sometimes—rousing scrutiny. On the
whole—consider it carefully—on the whole
it would be as well that you should let me
remove him abroad," replied the doctor.

"Let us hear what he says himself," said
Robin.

"I am sure he will be of my opinion,"
returned the stranger, and they went back
into the first room. Alice had brought in
Carl's cloak, thoroughly dry, and he was
busy putting it on.

"I am almost ready, doctor," he exclaimed,
eagerly.

"You will go with me, will you not? You
feel safe?"

"Yes, much safer. Come away." He took
no notice of Alice's hand held out to him, or
of the tears that she could not restrain, but
hurried down the stairs holding the doctor's
arm. Robin followed. At the door waited
a carriage with another man in it, like a
keeper. Carl got in; then cried out, "Good
night. Alice, you'll come to see me; you
too, Robin, and the boys?"

"Yes, yes, Carl; poor fellow," replied his
Brother, wringing his hand.

The window of the carriage was pulled up,
and it drove rapidly away down the street
through the pouring rain and howling wind.
Robin returned slowly to his wife. She
was crying over the fire.

"O, husband, what a Christmas guest!
what a coming home!" cried she.

Sad! Marston must have known of this,
—I wonder why he never told us," replied
Robin. "What did he say to you while
I was out of the room with the doctor?"

"Nothing."

"Let us get to bed. Poor Carl! he is not in
bad hands seemingly, but I'll go and see after
him in a little while. It is like a dream, is
it not? Come and gone already!"

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.

THE summer following Carl Branston's
visit to his brother's house in London, was
one of prolonged drought; the shrubs and
flowers were shrivelled and burnt up, the
earth yawned in thirsty cracks all over its
surface. Robin had seen Carl twice, and had
been convinced by what he himself observed,
as well as by the doctor's arguments, that he
could not be in kinder hands, and he left him
where he had at first voluntarily placed
himself. Having seen him, Robin was satisfied
that his delusions were incurable, and by and
by, happy in his own home, in his wife and
his beautiful children, the remembrance
of that awful visit ceased to weigh upon him.

As for Carl, when he passed out of the
dusty arena of business life, his place was
filled up, and he was forgotten, as much as if
he was already dead. His money accumulated
untouched; his fate had evolved itself
step by step from the crime which his
paroxysms of remorse continually betrayed.
From that moment mists of vague dread
confused him, then a twilight of distinct fears
which made themselves ghastly shapes to his
bodily eyes, and finally madness fell upon him.

It was on the seventeenth day of August