anxious about it as I am," he said.

"To tell you the truth, I am a little alarmed when I think of
Catherine. If there is another long delay, how do we know what
may happen before the law has confirmed the mother's claim to the
child? Let me send one of the servants here to wait at your club.
Will you give him a line telling me when the trial is likely to
take place?"

"With the greatest pleasure. Good-night."

Left alone, Randal sat by the fireside for a while, thinking of
the future. The prospect, as he saw it, disheartened him. As a
means of employing his mind on a more agreeable subject for
reflection, he opened his traveling desk and took out two or
three letters. They had been addressed to him, while he was in
America, by Captain Bennydeck.

The captain had committed an error of which most of us have been
guilty in our time. He had been too exclusively devoted to work
that interested him to remember what was due to the care of his
health. The doctor's warnings had been neglected; his
over-strained nerves had given way; and the man whose strong
constitution had resisted cold and starvation in the Arctic
wastes, had broken down under stress of brain-work in London.

This was the news which the first of the letters contained.

The second, written under dictation, alluded briefly to the
remedies suggested. In the captain's case, the fresh air