Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/46

36 Crimean shirt and moleskin trousers, knelt before the crimson settee in the midst of the velvet-pile carpet.

"Poverty in the midst of riches," whispered Dowling to his wife.

"Yes, that boundary rider is richer than he, poor man!"

"And always has been," the husband replied.

The worthy couples placed the wounded man on a mattress and bore him to his bedroom. All night long the Dowlings sat and watched, while Jane stood at the foot of the bed gazing wistfully at the troubled sleeper, or wandered about the empty rooms of the lonely house, bewailing her impending loss. Her husband had ridden to Gumford for the Doctor.

Towards morning the sick man's breathing became more regular. He opened his eyes and looked long at the two watchers. He averted his gaze, then scanned the anxious faces as the sick are wont to do. The sufferer tried to extend his hand towards the watchers.

"You are better now," said Dowling, taking the hot, moist hand in both of his, while his wife smoothed the pillow and tenderly moistened with a damp cloth the fevered brow.

"Why do you come?" the sick man with difficulty whispered. "Why not, like everybody else, leave me to my fate?"

Quietly they assured him that the world was much what people made it. That sometimes God left men alone that they might discover how empty it was without the love of their kind and of Him.

"And you forgive me?" he said, stretching out his hand again, and looking into the face of the man he had wronged.

"As God forgives. I have angered you unintentionally, and perhaps given you cause for resentment."