The Carlow folks were deeply impressed with the two eminent surgeons, of

whom some of them had heard, and on Tuesday, the bulletins marking

considerable encouragement, most of them decided to temporarily risk the

editor of the "Herald" to such capable hands, and they returned quietly to

their homes; only a few were delayed in reaching Carlow by travelling to

the first station in the opposite direction before they succeeded in

planting themselves on the proper train.

Meanwhile, the object of their solicitude tossed and burned on his bed of

pain. He was delirious most of the time, and, in the intervals of half-

consciousness, found that his desire to live, very strong at first, had

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disappeared; he did not care much about anything except rest--he wanted

peace. In his wanderings he was almost always back in his college days,

beholding them in an unhappy, distorted fashion. He would lie asprawl on

the sward with the others, listening to the Seniors singing on the steps,

and, all at once, the old, kindly faces would expand enormously and press

over him with hideous mouthings, and an ugly Senior in cap and gown would

stamp him and grind a spiked heel into his hand; then they would toss him

high into air that was all flames, and he would fall and fall through the

raging heat, seeing the cool earth far beneath him, but never able to get

down to it again. And then he was driven miles and miles by dusky figures,

through a rain of boiling water; and at other times the whole universe was

a vast, hot brass bell, and it gave off a huge, continuous roar and hum,

while he was a mere point of consciousness floating in the exact centre of

the heat and sound waves, and he listened, listened for years, to the

awful, brazen hum from which there could be no escape; at the same time it

seemed to him that he was only a Freshman on the slippery roof of the

tower, trying to steal the clapper of the chapel bell.

Finally he came to what he would have considered a lucid interval, had it

not appeared that Helen Sherwood was whispering to Tom Meredith at the

foot of his bed. This he knew to be a fictitious presentation of his

fever, for was she not by this time away and away for foreign lands? And,

also, Tom Meredith was a slim young thing, and not the middle-aged youth

with an undeniable stomach and a baldish head, who, by the grotesque

necromancy of his hallucinations, assumed a preposterous likeness to his

old friend. He waved his hand to the figures and they vanished like

figments of a dream; but all the same the vision had been realistic enough

for the lady to look exquisitely pretty. No one could help wishing to stay

in a world which contained as charming a picture as that.




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