“He looked like a demon!” she said again.  “Have you got any of that old wine in the house, Caroline?  I don’t feel as if I could stand much more.”

Indeed, she looked overcome.  Her handsome placid face was worn and strained and pale.

“Yes, there’s plenty,” said Caroline; “you can have some when you go to bed.”

“I think we had all better take some,” said Mrs. Brigham.  “Oh, my God, Caroline, what—­”

“Don’t ask and don’t speak,” said Caroline.

“No, I am not going to,” replied Mrs. Brigham; “but—­”

Rebecca moaned aloud.

“What are you doing that for?” asked Caroline harshly.

“Poor Edward,” returned Rebecca.

“That is all you have to groan for,” said Caroline.  “There is nothing else.”

“I am going to bed,” said Mrs. Brigham.  “I sha’n’t be able to be at the funeral if I don’t.”

Soon the three sisters went to their chambers and the south parlour was deserted.  Caroline called to Henry in the study to put out the light before he came upstairs.  They had been gone about an hour when he came into the room bringing the lamp which had stood in the study.  He set it on the table and waited a few minutes, pacing up and down.  His face was terrible, his fair complexion showed livid; his blue eyes seemed dark blanks of awful reflections.

Then he took the lamp up and returned to the library.  He set the lamp on the centre table, and the shadow sprang out on the wall.  Again he studied the furniture and moved it about, but deliberately, with none of his former frenzy.  Nothing affected the shadow.  Then he returned to the south room with the lamp and again waited.  Again he returned to the study and placed the lamp on the table, and the shadow sprang out upon the wall.  It was midnight before he went upstairs.  Mrs. Brigham and the other sisters, who could not sleep, heard him.

The next day was the funeral.  That evening the family sat in the south room.  Some relatives were with them.  Nobody entered the study until Henry carried a lamp in there after the others had retired for the night.  He saw again the shadow on the wall leap to an awful life before the light.

The next morning at breakfast Henry Glynn announced that he had to go to the city for three days.  The sisters looked at him with surprise.  He very seldom left home, and just now his practice had been neglected on account of Edward’s death.  He was a physician.

“How can you leave your patients now?” asked Mrs. Brigham wonderingly.

“I don’t know how to, but there is no other way,” replied Henry easily.  “I have had a telegram from Doctor Mitford.”

“Consultation?” inquired Mrs. Brigham.

“I have business,” replied Henry.

Doctor Mitford was an old classmate of his who lived in a neighbouring city and who occasionally called upon him in the case of a consultation.