"And you have them with you?"
"Yes."
"It was strangely informal."
"True, but this gentleman was about to sail for Europe, to be absent five years—he sailed this afternoon—and he wished to be rid of his commission."
"It is like a romance," said the merchant, slowly.
"Yes, it's like a romance. I don't mind telling you," added the doctor, in a lower tone, "that it relieves me very much. Conscious, as I am, that my life hangs on a thread, it makes me easy about the future of my wife and child."
"Your life hangs on a thread? What do you mean?"
"I mean," said the physician, seriously, "that our family is subject to heart disease. My grandfather died at a minute's notice; so did my father; so, in all probability, shall I. No insurance company, knowing this, would insure me, and, till this windfall came, I was subject at times to great anxiety."
"Does your wife—my sister—know that you have received this money?" asked Walton, slowly.