“Now, Miss Panney,” said Phoebe, speaking very earnestly, but in a low voice, “I can’t say that I can really give you the true head and tail of it, for it’s mighty hard to find out what did happen to that young gal.  All I know is that she didn’t come down to breakfast, and that Mr. Haverley went up to her room hisself, and he knocked and he knocked, and then he pushed the door open and went in, and, bless my soul, Miss Panney, she wasn’t there.  Then he hollered, and me and him, we sarched and sarched the house.  He went up into the garret by hisself, for you may be sure I wouldn’t go there, but he was just wild, and didn’t care where he went, and there he found her dead asleep on the floor, and a livin’ skeleton a sittin’ watchin’ her.”

“Nonsense!” exclaimed Miss Panney; “he never told you that.”

“That’s the pint of what I got out of him, and you know, Miss Panney, that that garret’s hanted.”

Miss Panney wasted no words in attempting to disprove this assertion.

“He found her asleep on the floor?” said she.

“Yes, Miss Panney,” answered Phoebe, “dead asleep, or more likely, to my mind, in a dead faint, among all the drafts and chills of that garret, and in her stockin’ feet.  She had tuk up a candle with her, but I’spect the skeleton blowed it out.  And now she’s got an awful cold, so she can scarcely breathe, and a fever hot enough to roast an egg.”

At this moment Ralph appeared in the hall.  The visitor immediately went up to him.

“Mr. Haverley, I suppose.  I am Miss Panney.  I am a neighbor, and I came to see if I could do anything for your sister before the doctor arrives.  I am a good nurse, and know all about sicknesses;” and she explained why she had come and the doctor had not.

When Miriam turned her head and saw the black eyes of Miss Panney gazing down upon her, she pushed herself back in the bed, and exclaimed,—­

“Are you his wife?”

“No, indeed,” said Miss Panney, “I wouldn’t marry him for a thousand pounds.  I am your nurse.  I am going to give you something nice to make you feel better.  Put your hand in mine.  There, that will do.  Keep yourself covered up, even if you are a little warm, and I will come back presently with the nicest kind of a cup of tea.”

“It’s a cold and a fever,” she said to Ralph, outside the chamber door.  “The commonest thing in the world.  But I’ll make her a hot drink that will do her more good than anything else that could be given her, and when the doctor comes, he’ll tell you so.  He knows me, and what I can do for sick people.  I brought everything that’s needed in my bag, and I am going down to the kitchen myself.  But how in the world did she come to stay on the garret floor all night?  She couldn’t have been in a swoon all that time.”

“No,” answered Ralph; “she told me she came to her senses, she didn’t know when, but that everything was pitch dark about her, and feeling dreadfully tired and weak, she put her head down on her arm, and tried to think why she was lying on such a hard floor, and then she must have dropped into the heavy sleep in which I found her.  She was tired out with her journey and the excitement.  Do you think she is in danger, Miss Panney?”