Charles Lotin Hildreth.
A COVENANT WITH DEATH.[1]
A NARRATIVE.
By the Author of "An Unlaid Ghost."
To E. P. T.
"So little payment for so great a debt."
CHAPTER I.
"O Death in Life! the days that are no more."
It would have been no surprise to his friends had Loyd Morton speedily followed his young wife to the grave. Their brief union had been a very communion of souls—one of those rare experiences in wedlock for jealousy of which Destiny may almost be pardoned. Small wonder, therefore, that his grief was of that speechless description which "whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break." For a time it was thought he could not survive his dumb despair; or, if he did, that melancholia would claim him an easy victim. It is needless to affirm that he escaped the wreck of both life and reason, since the existence of this chronicle attests so much.
The manner of his escape does not appear; though it was astutely surmised, and perhaps with some show of probability, that, being an expert and practitioner in disorders of the nervous system, he healed himself, albeit physicians of experience may entertain contrary views concerning the feasibility of the feat. At all events, he came forth to face his world again, a sad, pallid being indued with indomitable perseverance and fortitude; more than ever zealous in the discharge of his engagements; as never before devoted to his profession. But a sympathetic eye could not fail to detect the feverish abandonment of self, the positively voracious hungering for constant activity, which were in themselves a pathetic commentary upon the frame of mind in which his bereavement had left him.