“I told you so,” said the doctor, turning to his wife; “Harry’s no better—consultation this morning—very little hope of him;—so much for my not being here to prescribe for him. Ruth shouldered a great responsibility when she brought him away out of reach of my practice. You go into that room, there, Mis. Hall, No. 20, with your traps and things, and take off your bonnet and keep quiet, while I go up and see him.”
CHAPTER XXVIII.
“Humph!” said the doctor, “humph!” as Ruth drew aside the curtain, and the light fell full upon Harry’s face. “Humph! it is all up with him; he’s in the last stage of the complaint; won’t live two days;” and stepping to the table, the doctor uncorked the different phials, applied them to the end of his nose, examined the labels, and then returned to the bed-side, where Ruth stood bending over Harry, so pallid, so tearless, that one involuntarily prayed that death, when he aimed his dart, might strike down both together.
“Humph!” said the doctor again! “when did he have his reason last?”
“A few moments, day before yesterday,” said Ruth, without removing her eyes from Harry.
“Well; he has been murdered,—yes murdered, just as much as if you had seen the knife put to his throat. That tells the whole story, and I don’t care who knows it. I have been looking at those phials,—wrong course of treatment altogether for typhoid fever; fatal mistake. His death will lie heavy at somebody’s door,” and he glanced at Ruth.
“Hush! he is coming to himself,” said Ruth, whose eyes had never once moved from her husband.
“Then I must tell him that his hours are numbered,” said the doctor, thrusting his hands in his pockets, and pompously walking round the bed.