ne."

CHAPTER XIX

SUSPENSE

He found them as he had expected, the girl beside the couch, and the old
man prone upon it, wrapped to the chin in a gaudy Navajo blanket. But
to-night his eyes were closed, a most unusual thing, and Byrne could
look more closely at the aged face. For on occasions when the eyes were
wide, it was like looking into the throat of a searchlight to stare at
the features--all was blurred. He discovered now wrinkled and
purple-stained lids under the deep shadow of the brows--and eyes were so
sunken that there seemed to be no pupils there. Over the cheek bones the
skin was drawn so tightly that it shone, and the cheeks fell away into
cadaverous hollows. But the lips, beneath the shag of grey beard, were
tightly compressed. No, this was not sleep. It carried, as Byrne gazed,
a connotation of swifter, fiercer thinking, than if the gaunt old man
had stalked the floor and poured forth a tirade of words.

The girl came to meet the doctor. She said: "Will you use a narcotic?"

"Why?" asked Byrne. "He seems more quiet than usual."

"Look more closely," she whispered.

And when he obeyed, he saw that the whole body of Joe Cumberland
quivered like an aspen, continually. So the finger of the duellist
trembles on the trigger of his gun before he receives the signal to
fire--a suspense more terrible than the actual face of death.

"A narcotic?" she pleaded. "Something to give him just one moment of
full relaxation?"

"I can't do it," said Byrne. "If his heart were a shade stronger, I
should. But as it is, the only thing that sustains him is the force of
his will-power. Do you want me to unnerve the very strength which keeps
him alive?"

She shuddered.

"Do you mean that if he sleeps it will be--death?"

"I have told you before," said the doctor, "that there are phases of
this case which I do not understand. I predict nothing with certainty.
But I very much fear that if your father falls into a complete slumber
he will never waken from it. Once let his brain cease functioning and I
fear that the heart will follow suit."

They stood on the farther side of the room and spoke in the softest of
whispers, but now the deep, calm voice of the old man broke in: "Doc,
they ain't no use of worryin'. They ain't no use of medicine. All I need
is quiet."

"Do you want to be alone?" asked the girl.

"No, not so long as you don't make no noise. I can 'most hear
something, but your whisperin' shuts i