that this outburst might prove fatal to their patient in that critical hour.

Jay Gardiner was looking up at her with dazed eyes. He recognized her, uttered her name.

"Was it to-night that I left your house, after settling when the marriage was to take place?" he asked.

Miss Pendleton humored the idea by answering "Yes," instead of telling him that the visit he referred to had taken place several weeks before.

"To-day was to have been our wedding-day," she sobbed, "and now you are ill--very ill. But, Jay," she whispered, bending down and uttering the words rapidly in his ear, "it could take place just the same, here and now, if you are willing. I sent a note to a minister to come here, and he may arrive at any moment. When he comes, shall I speak to him about it?"

He did not answer; he was trying to remember something, trying, oh, so hard, to remember something that lay like a weight on his mind.

Heaven help him! the past was entirely blotted out of his memory!

He recollected leaving Miss Pendleton's house after setting the date for his marriage with her, but beyond that evening the world was a blank to him.

He never remembered that there were such people as David Moore, the basket-maker, and a beautiful girl, his daughter Bernardine, to whom he had lost his heart, and whom he had wedded, and that she was now waiting for him. His mind was to be a blank upon all that for many a day to come.

"What do you say, Jay?" repeated Miss Pendleton; "will not the ceremony take place to-day, as we had intended?"

"They tell me I am very ill, Sally," he whispered. "I--I may be dying. Do you wish the ceremony to take place in the face of that fact?"

"Yes," she persisted. "I want you to keep your solemn vow that you would make me your wife; and--and delays are dangerous."

"Then it shall be as you wish," he murmured, faintly, in an almost inaudible voice, the effort to speak being so great as to cause him to almost lose consciousness.

Sally stepped quickly from Jay's beside out into the adjoining room.

"Mr. Gardiner wishes our marriage to take place here and now," she announced. "A minister will be 

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