"That I must not do," said Mr. Short, "for I am under a sort of promise not to tell; but if you really think that I ought to tell him myself, I will go back and do it."
"If I really think!" exclaimed Mr. Dixwell, "I have not the slightest doubt of it. It is your bounden duty if you be a Christian. Not only tell him, my good friend, but urge him strongly to send for some minister of religion. Though friends may fail him, and he may not wish to see them—though all worldly supports may give way beneath him, and he may find no strengthening—though all earthly hopes may pass away, and give him no mortal cheer, the gospel of Christ can never fail to support, and strengthen, and comfort, and elevate. The sooner he knows that his tenement of clay is falling to the dust of which it was raised, the better will be his readiness to quit it, and it is wise, most wise, to shake ourselves free altogether from the dust and crumbling ruins of this temporal state, ere they fall upon our heads and bear us down to the same destruction as themselves."
"Well, well, I will go back and tell him," said Mr. Short, and bidding the good rector adieu, he once more mounted his horse and rode away.
Now Mr. Dixwell was an excellent good man, but he was not without certain foibles, especially those that sometimes accompany considerable simplicity of character. "I will see which way he takes," said Mr. Dixwell, "and go and visit the young man myself if I can find him out;" and accordingly he marched up stairs to his bedroom, which commanded a somewhat extensive prospect of the country, and traced the surgeon, as he trotted slowly and thoughtfully along. He could not actually see the cottage of the Bests, but he perceived that the surgeon there passed over the brow of the hill, and after waiting for several minutes, he did not catch any horseman rising upon the opposite slope over which the road was continued. Now there was no cross road in the hollow and only three houses, and therefore Mr. Dixwell naturally concluded that to one of those three houses the surgeon had gone.
In the mean while, Mr. Short rode on unconscious that his movements were observed, and meditating with a troubled mind upon the best means of conveying the terrible intelligence he had to communicate. He did not like the task at all; but yet he resolved to perform it manfully, and dismounting at the cottage door, he went in again. There was nobody within but the sick man and good old Jenny Best. The old woman was at the moment in the outer room, and when she saw the surgeon she shook her head, and said in a low voice, "Ah, dear, I am glad you have come back again, sir, he does not seem right at all."
"Who's that?" said the voice of John Ayliffe; and going in, Mr. Short closed the doors between the two rooms.
"There, don't shut that door," said John Ayliffe, "it is so infernally close—I don't feel at all well, Mr. Short—I don't know what's the matter with me. It's just as if I had got no heart. I think a glass of brandy would do me good."
"It would kill you," said the surgeon.
"Well," said the young man, "I'm not sure that would not be best for me—come," he continued sharply, "tell me how long I am to lie here on my back?"
"That I cannot tell, Sir John," replied the surgeon, "but at all events, supposing that you do recover, and that every thing goes well, you could not hope to move for two or three months."