Therefore, since I was at hand, and would be a wealthy man some day, and indeed even now did very well on my French _rentes_, he had set his heart on this.

It was not wholly evil; yet the cold-bloodedness of it affected me like a stink....
* * * * * The matter ended, for the time, on the evening of the thirteenth of August, in the following manner, when my adventures, of which my life, ever since my audience with our Most Holy Lord the Pope, had been but a prelude, properly began--those adventures for whose sake I have begun this transcript from my diary, and this adventure was pre-shadowed, as I think now, by one or two curious happenings.
On the morning of the thirteenth of August, two days before the Feast of the Assumption (on which we had intended to hear mass again at Standon) my Cousin Dorothy came down a little late, and found us already over our oatbread and small beer which we were accustomed to take upon rising--and which was called our "morning." "I slept very ill," she said; and no more then.
Afterwards, however, as I was lighting my pipe in the little court at the back of the house, she came out and beckoned me in; and I saw that something was amiss.

I went after her into the little hung parlour and we sat down.
"I slept very ill, cousin," she said again; and I observed again that her eyes looked hollow.

"And I dare not tell my father my fancies," she said, "for he is terrified at such things; and has forbade the servants to speak of such things." "The tall old woman, then ?" I said; for I had not forgotten what she had told me before.
"Yes," she said, smiling a little painfully--"and yet I was not at all afraid when she came; or when I thought that she did." "Tell me the whole tale," I said.
"I awakened about one o'clock this morning," she said, "and knew that my sleep was gone from me altogether.

Yet I did not feel afraid or restless; but lay there content enough, expecting something, but what it would be I did not know.