The minister raised his brows interrogatively.
“Because we must write and ask our friends to come and spend the summer with us here.”
“Ah! I understand,” said the rector.
“Your patient lingers longer than any of us expected,” remarked Ran.
“Yes,” replied Mr. Campbell, “his tenacity of life is really wonderful, poor soul!”
And he arose and bade his hosts good-night.
Gentleman Geff lay slowly sinking at the rectory of Haymore.
The cold contracted on that fatal winter night of his attempted flight had settled on his lungs, and in the deeply inflamed condition of the whole system from alcoholism, had fastened with fatal tenacity upon his system.
But with the change in the seat of the disease—which, while it slowly destroyed his lungs, completely relieved his brain—his mental faculties were perfectly restored, with clear recollection of all that had transpired, so that he knew his antecedents and his present surroundings quite as well as our readers do. He knew also that he had no reason to fear prosecution. His only fear—a secret one—was of death, “and after death the judgment.”
He had not been prosecuted for any of his felonies, which, indeed, were surrounded by such circumstances as admitted of their being ignored rather than compounded.