“My dear Fellow,—Being a hearty admirer of your wife’s management of your health, I, a ridiculous bachelor, presume to afflict you with medicine of my own, gratis. I send you half a dozen bottles of Martinez’s 1887, as good a port as you will find in any cellar. I know that you are an abstemious beggar, but take the stuff for the tonic it is, and drink to an ‘incomparable’ wife’s health. The wine has purpled me out of the gray dumps on many an occasion. Not that you will need it, sir, for such a disease. Chivalry forbid! Yours ever,
“Porteus Carmagee.”
“P. S.—Gage is smuggling this over for me in the car.”
Murchison read the letter through as though this eccentric but lovable gentleman had written to bully him on behalf of some injured client. Six bottles of Martinez’s 1887, plumped by this dear old blunderer into Kate’s haven of refuge! Had Murchison believed in the personal existence of the devil, he would have imagined that the Spirit of Evil had bewitched the innocent heart of Mr. Porteus Carmagee. Good God! what a frail fool he was that such a thing should have the least significance for him! James Murchison scared by a drug in a bottle! And yet the first impulse that he had was to dash the hamper on the floor, and watch the red juice dye the stones.
He heard his wife singing in her room above, singing with that tender yet subdued abandonment that goes with a happy heart. He heard the door open, her footstep on the landing.
“James, dear.”
He started as though guilty, and crumpled the letter in his hand.
“Yes.”
“Would you like supper now, and a walk later? There will be a moon.”
“Let us have supper,” he answered back.