"I should recommend his being removed to the nearest hotel. I will send a woman to nurse him. Do you know if this is the first stroke he has ever had?"
"No, I do not."
The surgeon looked more suspicious than ever, after receiving this answer.
"Strange," he said, "that you, who say you are his brother, should not be able to give me information upon that point."
Joseph Wilmot answered with an air of carelessness that was almost contemptuous:
"It is strange," he said; "but many stranger things have happened in this world before now. My brother and I haven't met for years until we met to-day."
The unconscious man was removed from the railway station to an inn near at hand—a humble, countrified place, but clean and orderly. Here he was taken to a bed-chamber, whose old-fashioned latticed windows looked out upon the dusty road.
The doctor did all that his skill could devise, but he could not restore consciousness to the paralyzed brain. The soul was gone already. The body lay, a form of motionless and senseless clay, under the white counterpane; and Joseph Wilmot, sitting near the foot of the bed, watched it with a gloomy face.
The woman who was to nurse the sick man came by-and-by, and took her place by the pillow. But there was very little for her to do.
"Is there any hope of his recovering?" Joseph asked eagerly, as the doctor was about to leave the room.