neglect to eat the skin of my baked potato. When I think
of those I let go in my careless days of plenty, I grow heart-sick."

"A little at a time, young man. If they let you gorge as you'd like to
there would be no more use sending for me; you'd be a goner--that's what
you'd be! Head feel all right?"

"Fine!--I've settled down to a pleasant reading of Holy Writ. This Old
Testament is mighty interesting to me, though doubtless I've read it all
before."

"It's a very complicated case, but I think he's coming on all right," the
doctor assured the alarmed old man outside the door. "He may be a little
flighty now and then, but don't pay any attention to him; just soothe him
over. He's getting back to himself--stronger every hour. We often have
these things to contend with."

And the doctor, outwardly confident, went away to puzzle over the case.

Again the following morning, when Bernal had leaned his difficult way down
to the couch in the study, the old man was dismayed by his almost
unspeakable aberrations. With no sign of fever, with a cool brow and
placid pulse, in level tones, he spoke the words of the mad.

"You know, grandad," he began easily, looking up at the once more placid
old man who sat beside him, "I am just now recalling matters that were
puzzling me much before the sickness began to spin my head about so fast
on my shoulders. The harder I thought, the faster my head went around,
until it sent my mind all to little spatters in a circle about me. One
thing I happened to be puzzling over was how the impression first became
current that this god of the Jews was a being of goodness. Such an
impression seems to have been tacitly accepted for some centuries after
the iniquities so typical of him had been discountenanced by society--long
after human sacrifice was abhorred, and even after the sacrificing of
animals was held to be degrading. It's a point that escapes me, owing to
my addled brain; doubtless you can set me right. At present I can't
conceive how the notion could ever have occurred to any one. I now
remember this book well enough to know that not only is little good ever
recorded of him, but he is so continually barbarous, and so atrociously
cruel in his barbarities. And he was thought to be all-powerful when he is
so pitifully ineffectual, with all his crude power--the poor old fellow
was forever bungling--then bungling again in his efforts to patch up his
errors. Indeed, he would be rather a pathe