“What about Charley?” he asked breathlessly.
“My dear man,” said the doctor, kindly, “we can’t tell. He is alive; we are making every effort to keep him alive. That is all I can say.”
The night came on, but Parmenter did not sleep. Many times in the darkness he crept down the section stairs, across the campus, and over to the house where Charley lay. There were lights in the windows. He could see people moving about in the rooms, and twice some one came out of whom he could make inquiries.
Just before dawn he stood in the shadow of the great elm by the side of Professor Lee’s gate, waiting to see or hear some one or something from his friend.
The hall door opened, and the professor himself came out. With his hands behind him, and his face turned toward the stars, he came down to the gate, and out on the walk, passing under the gas-lamp within five feet of Parmenter, and continuing along the terrace to the college gate. There he turned, came back the same way, and reëntered his house.
That face, as Parmenter saw it under the lamplight, coming and going, struck him to the heart. Never before in his life had he seen such woe and hope expressed in a single countenance. Never before had he seen the intense desire of a man’s heart strained through his face like this.
Was it possible that this was the man whom he had charged with unjust motives, with double dealing, with conduct entirely at variance with the whole tenor of his good and gracious life? And what foundation was there for the charge?
As he stood there, Parmenter went over in swift review the reasons for his hatred of Professor Lee. He stripped them of their fallacies, of their sophistries, of their baseless judgments, till they stood naked and shrinking before him; and then for the first time he realized how utterly unworthy he had been to criticise the motives or denounce the conduct of such a man.
He went back to his room under the dawn-flushed sky, more wise and more humble than he had ever been before.
All through the quiet Sunday Charley lay, gaining a little hour by hour, and when night came again they said that now he had a fair chance to live.