Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 6).djvu/422

 "Do you think the child worse?" she asked.

"No," I answered; "he is in precisely the same condition he was in when we arrived yesterday."

"You think he will recover?" she continued, fixing her eyes on me. "

There are certain signs which lead me to think he will not die," I replied, somewhat evasively.

"But I am praying very earnestly that he may die," she answered. "I don't wish him to retain the sort of death in life which Mr. Parsons has prophesied for him."

"It may not be so bad as you fear," I answered.

She shook her head, gave me a broken-hearted glance, and returned immediately to the sick room. I now knew why her lips moved so often—she was praying for the child's death.

Soon afterwards, unable to endure the awful tedium of the house, I went out for a stroll. I walked through the village, and regretted very much that I had done so, when on my way home I was met by that disreputable person, Charles Stanhope, who immediately insisted on joining me.

He was half tipsy, and any shadow of compunction which he might possibly feel in addressing the Squire of Chartelpool was naturally absent from his manner when he merely spoke to the doctor.

"Hooray!" he began. "So I'm to be heir after all! The kid hasn't a leg to stand on. I believe if you told me the truth, doctor, that his death is expected each moment."

"Nothing of the kind," I answered, promptly. (For the first time I felt quite inclined to indorse Stanhope's views that this wretch must be kept out of possession at any cost.)

"The boy will not die," I repeated; "you can take a doctor's word for that."

I strode quickly away, and heard the brute hurling curses after me as I went down the avenue. I said nothing to Hal of my interview with his enemy, and as we were both tired out, and there was nothing whatever to be done for the child but simply to wait the issue of events, we both retired at an early hour to our rooms.

While I remained downstairs I had been the victim of the most overpowering drowsiness. There come such moments in the lives of all people. There come hours when the simple desire for natural sleep triumphs over sorrow, over anxiety, over mental pain. The physical is stronger at such a time than the mental. The body is worn out—rest it must. Thus criminals sleep on the eve of execution.

The desire for slumber had visited me in this overwhelming manner while I remained downstairs. I scarcely heard Stanhope while he conversed. The pathetic figure of the child who lay in living death became blurred and indistinct to my mental view.

I went gladly upstairs, entered my room, shut the door, and prepared for slumber. Strange! Incomprehensible! At this moment I became wide awake. All wish for sleep left me. I was intensely, painfully wakeful.

I sat down in an armchair and waited for sleep to visit me. I perceived that it had no intention of doing so; there was, therefore, not the least use in my going to bed. In my present wakeful state I must think of something, and what more natural than for me to turn my thoughts to the operation which might be performed on little Hal Stanhope, and which would, if successful, save his life in that full sense which makes it a pleasure to live?

I had performed the operation of trephining in every possible region of the head, but only on the dead body. I had seen it done