"Thou hast brought the book?"
Dummie answered by lifting up the book he had brought from the honest butcher's.
"Clear the room, then!" said the sufferer, with that air of mock command so common to the insane. "We would be alone!"
Dummie winked at the good woman at the foot of the bed; and she (though generally no easy person to order or to persuade) left, without reluctance, the sick chamber.
"If she be a-going to pray!" murmured our landlady, (for that office did the good matron hold,) "I may indeed as well take myself off, for it's not werry comfortable like, to those who be old, to hear all that-'ere!"
With this pious reflection, the hostess of the "Mug," so was the hostelry called, heavily descended the creaking stairs.
"Now, man!" said the sufferer sternly,—"swear that you will never reveal,—swear, I say! and by the great God, whose angels are about this night, if ever you break the oath, I will come back and haunt you to your dying day!"
Dummie's face grew pale, for he was super-
