The Courtship of Morrice Buckler

"Hurry!" he said in a thick, strangled voice. "Assizes--twenty-first--Jeffries."

And with a sudden convulsion he straightened himself, stood for a second on the tips of his toes, with the veins ridged on his livid face like purple weals, and then fell in a huddled lump upon the floor. I sprang to the stair-head and shouted for some one to run for a doctor. Jack was already loosening the man's shirt.

"It is a fit," he said, clasping a hand to his heart.

Luckily my bedroom gave onto the parlour, and between us we carried him within and laid him gently on my bed. His eyelids were open and his eyes fixed, but turned inwards, so that one saw but the whites of them, while a light froth oozed through his locked teeth.

"He will die," I cried.

A ewer of water stood by the bedside, and this I emptied over his head and shoulders, drowning the sheets, but to no other pu