Helen lay in a stupor while the fever burned her young life away.

She muttered constantly the word "Colin;" and Tallisker, though he had no hope that Colin would ever reach his sister, wrote for the young laird.
Just before the last she became clearly, almost radiantly conscious.
She would be alone with her father, and the old man, struggling bravely with his grief, knelt down beside her.

She whispered to him that there was a paper in the jewel-box on her table.

He went and got it.

It was a tiny scrap folded crosswise.