It had been a night of stark wakefulness, of a myriad details. And McPherson had borne the brunt of it all. Now, under an opiate, Marta was asleep. Mrs. Batholommey had trotted ponderously home to bear the black tidings of a prisoned child's Release to her husband. And Kathrien had gone to her own room under the doctor's gruff command to snatch an hour's rest. McPherson himself had come out into the cool and freshness of the new-born world for a breathing space, and to think.
The June day was young. Very young. Under the early sun the grass was afire with dew diamonds. The flowers, dripping and fragrant, held up their cups to the light. The town still lay asleep. Over the suburb brooded the Hush of the primal Wilderness, creeping back furtively and momentarily to its long-lost domain.
And presently the quiet was broken by the swift recurring click of heels on the sidewalk. Some one was coming along the slumbrous Main street; and coming with nervous haste. The steps turned in at the Grimm gate. McPherson raised his blood-shot, sleep-robbed eyes and stared crossly toward the newcomer.
It was Frederik Grimm. And, recognising him, McPherson's frown deepened into a scowl.
"Is it true?" asked Frederik as he stopped in front of the doctor. "I met Mrs. Batholommey. She was just passing the hotel on her way home. I hadn't been able to sleep, so I was starting out for a walk. She told me——"
"That Willem's dead?" finished McPherson, with brutal frankness. "Yes, it's true. Did you suppose that it was a new vaudeville joke?"
Frederik stood blinking, blank-faced, apparently failing to grasp the sense of the doctor's words. The younger man's aspect dully irritated McPherson.
"Yes," he reiterated, "the boy's dead. The problem of supporting him needn't bother you now. Not that it ever did. He's dead. And it's the luckiest thing that ever happened to him."
Frederik raised one hand in instinctive protest. But he might as well have sought to stem Niagara with a straw.
The doctor's strained nerves, his genuine grief, his dislike for the dapper young man before him, combined to open wide the floodgates of honest Scottish wrath. And he saw no cause to exercise self-control.