Fred made his heart soft with these thoughts; he overcame his own opposition almost altogether, partly with the sentiment of the nurse’s faithfulness, partly with his resentment against the others; and he was ready when he found himself in Janet’s room, face to face with her in the light of her lamp, to offer her any assurance of his protection and certainty she might require as to her living and her home. Janet, however, put no question to him on any such score. She shut the door and came up close to him in the lamp-light. “Mr. Fred,” she said, “you maun take courage, my bonnie man. There are dreadful things to be said to you to-night. Just summon all your strength and read that.”
Fred started at the sight of the paper she put before his eyes. “I see,” he said, “it is my father’s writing. But you need not show me any letter. He told me himself, the day before he died----”
“Oh, laddie, laddie! take it and read it before I go out o’ my senses,” Janet cried.
He took the paper into his hands. His father’s handwriting, there could be no doubt; but no suspicion of the truth was in Fred’s mind. He glanced over it, and thought to himself that he had gone out of his senses, as Janet said, or had lost himself in some incoherent dream. “My wife’s marriage must be stopped.” What did that mean? A man who died two years ago, how could he write about an event of to-day? Was he going mad? Was he in a dream? Was it some delusion which she had put by witchcraft before his eyes? “My wife’s marriage must be stopped.” “How could he know?” he asked with blanched lips. “How could he tell there would be a marriage?” He turned upon her a face blank of all expression, pale, in a horror of enlightenment about to come.
“Oh, boy, boy! cannot ye see?” cried Janet. She put forth a long trembling finger and thrust it at the paper, pointing to the date. Fred looked and read. He read it a second time aloud, a strange terror growing upon him: “June 3, 18--.” “Why,” he said, “why----.” Then, stammering and stumbling over the words, broke down. “Why, why,” he began again with a laugh, “we cannot all be mad and going to Bedlam! It’s this year: June 3, 18--.”
The old woman grasped him by both his hands. “It’s this year--and we’re no mad, though often, often I’ve felt on the edge of it. We’re no mad,” she repeated, “and it’s this year, and the man that wrote that is in the house this blessed night, Mr. Fred!”