"But, doctor, this is very sudden. Do you mean he will lie there helpless for the rest of his life?"
"I don't think he will lie there three weeks longer, but he may; we are not infallible. I shall have to hasten this morning. Young Marshall came home in a drunken rage last night, and kicked his wife, and she is going to die, I think. I don't know what we doctors would do if this were not a free country, and liquor-sellers had not a right to kill by inches all the people they choose. This victim over whom you are watching is only one of many. That ought to comfort the friends, ought it not? Good-morning."
"I haven't told them," said Mr. Chessney, two hours later, speaking to Claire. He had come out to get a breath of the sweet morning air, and to give Claire the news. During the weeks past, he had been very thoughtful of her anxiety, and very careful that she should receive daily bulletins. "I have not told them, but I must. Miss Benedict, this is the hardest task a man ever has to do. How can I tell that mother that she has robbed herself of her son? She has steadily thwarted for two years every scheme that I devised to help him; and she did not know what she was about, either, poor mother!"
"Did you ever try to tell her?"
"Yes, and failed, as you did. Alice told me of your effort. But I ought to have tried again. I knew she was deceived. She thought me a fanatic, and I could have told her of scenes that would have made one of her. I shrank from it."
It was more than two weeks before she saw him again. During this time she twice received little twisted slips of paper, brought to her by the faithful Bud, and on them would be written a request that she would pray for a soul in peril. One long letter, blistered with tears, Alice wrote to her; the burden of it being the same; and this was all she knew of what was passing in the house on the hill. She had not entered it since that day when its mistress turned from her. Not that she would not quickly have done so, had occasion arisen, but there seemed no need to force herself on the poor mother.
"I shall never see him again," she told herself, sorrowfully, "and I have seen him so many times when I might have tried to help him, and did not!"
Then there came one brief, never-to-be-forgotten note, written hurriedly by Mr. Chessney:
"I believe that Louis rests in the Everlasting Arms."
One Saturday morning she was summoned to the parlor to see Mr. Chessney. He came forward quickly, with an anxious air, as of one having a request to make which he feared might not be granted.