But, panic-stricken as she was, she had the presence of mind to undress Annella and place her in the bed, and put away all her clothing, and set the room in order before she gave the alarm. Then, indeed, she aroused the housekeeper, telling her that Miss Wilder was extremely ill and raving mad, and that a physician should be summoned at once.
Barbara Broadsides felt herself quite equal to such an emergency, and therefore declined to wake up her old mistresses before their accustomed hour. But she aroused Mr. Jessup, and dispatched him to Abbeytown to fetch a doctor, who arrived about the dawn of day. He pronounced the illness of Annella to be a most alarming type of brain-fever, and applied the proper remedies.
This was the beginning of a long and dangerous illness, during which the delirious girl continually raved of fire and floods, perils and rescues; but as no one but Tabitha in that house knew the secret of her absence that night, her talk was all considered to be the mere wanderings of a mind excited and deranged by fever, as, perhaps, it might have been.
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE WRECK AND THE DISCLOSURE.
“Storm that, like a demon,
Howls with horrid note
Round the toiling seamen
In the tossing boat—
Drive her out to sea!
“Sleet, and hail, and thunder—