“You ask not much; you are wise; not in vain have you suffered. That little you ask, I think, can be granted. But remember, not in a day, nor a week, nor perhaps a month, but sooner or later; I say not exactly when, for I am neither prophet nor charlatan. Still, if, according to the directions in your box there, you take my medicine steadily, without assigning an especial day, near or remote, to discontinue it, then may you calmly look for some eventual result of good. But again I say, you must have confidence.”
Feverishly he replied that he now trusted he had, and hourly should pray for its increase. When suddenly relapsing into one of those strange caprices peculiar to some invalids, he added: “But to one like me, it is so hard, so hard. The most confident hopes so often have failed me, and as often have I vowed never, no, never, to trust them again. Oh,” feebly wringing his hands, “you do not know, you do not know.”
“I know this, that never did a right confidence, come to naught. But time is short; you hold your cure, to retain or reject.”
“I retain,” with a clinch, “and now how much?”
“As much as you can evoke from your heart and heaven.”
“How?—the price of this medicine?”
“I thought it was confidence you meant; how much confidence you should have. The medicine,—that is half a dollar a vial. Your box holds six.”
The money was paid.
“Now, sir,” said the herb-doctor, “my business calls me away, and it may so be that I shall never see you again; if then——”
He paused, for the sick man’s countenance fell blank.