Accordingly, in his visit to Belcomb about noon next day, the doctor brought Mistress Forest over with him, who was at once installed as Ralph Derrick's sick-nurse; old Rachel being sent home to the lodge. No change had as yet taken place in the sufferer; but the doctor's practised eye perceived that one was impending. This time, he made a long and earnest examination of his patient.
“Will he live?” asked Madame again, when he had finished, with the same, earnestness, nay, even anguish as before.
“There is hope; yes, I think there is hope,” returned the doctor cautiously.
“Thank God for that; I thank Him for His great mercy!” ejaculated Madame with clasped hands and upturned eyes.
“Who is that?” inquired a hoarse voice from the bed. The words were indistinct, and uttered with difficulty, but on every ear within that room they smote with the most keen significance. The two women turned deadly pale; and even the doctor's finger shook as he placed it to his lips, in sign that they should keep silent.
“Hush, my good friend,” said he to the wounded man, whose eyes were now open wide, and staring straight before him: “you must not talk just now; speaking is very bad for you.”
“Who is that who was thanking God because there was hope of my life?” reiterated Ralph. “Neither man nor woman has any cause to do that, I'm sure; while some have cause enough to pray that I were dead already, or at least had lost my wits. Doctor—for I suppose you are a doctor—have I lost my wits or not? Am I a sane man, or one not in my right mind?”
“Hush, hush; you are sane enough of course, except to keep on talking thus when I tell you that to speak is to do yourself the most serious harm.”
“You hear him—all you in the room here,” continued the sick man in a voice which, though low and feeble, had a sort of malignant triumph in it, which grated on the ear. “This doctor says I am quite sane. He says also that there is hope of my life—just a shadow of a hope. He is wrong there, for I shall die. But, anyhow, I lie in peril of death, and yet in my right mind. Therefore, what I say is to be credited—that, I believe, is the law; and even the law is right sometimes. What I am about to say is Truth—every word of it. I wish to make a statement.—No, I will take no medicines; pen and ink, if I could only write, would be more welcome than the Elixir of Life, but I cannot.” Here a groan was wrung from his parched and bloodless lips. “O Heaven! the pain I suffer; it is the foretaste of the hell for which I am bound!”
“O sir,” ejaculated Mistress Forest, moving to the bed foot, so as to shew herself to his staring eyes, “think of heaven, not of hell. Ask for pardon of God, and not of revenge upon man.”