Mr. Delcher. He'll eat himself into shape now in no
time; but--I don't know--seems to me you stand a lot better show of making
a preacher out of his brother. Of course, I may be mistaken--we doctors
often are." Then the young physician became loftily humble: "But it
doesn't strike me he'll ever get his ideas exactly into Presbyterian shape
again!"

"But, man, he'll surely be rid of these devil's hallucinations?"

"Well, well--perhaps, but I'm almost afraid they're what we doctors call
'fixed delusions.'"

"But I set my heart so long ago on his preaching the Word. Oh, I've looked
forward to it so long--and so hard!"

"Well, all you can do now is to feed him and not excite him. We often have
these cases."

The very last of Bernal's utterances that could have been reprobated in a
well man was his telling Clytie in the old gentleman's presence that,
whereas in his boyhood he had pictured the hand of God as a big black hand
reaching down to "remove" people--"the way you weed an onion bed"--he now
conceived it to be like her own--"the most beautiful fat, red hand in the
world, always patting you or tucking you in, or reaching you something
good or pointing to a jar of cookies." It was so dangerously close to
irreverence that it made Clytemnestra look stiff and solemn as she
arranged matters on the luncheon tray; yet it was so inoffensive,
considering the past, that it made Grandfather Delcher quite hopeful.

Thereafter, instead of babbling blasphemies, the convalescent became
silent for the most part, yet cheerful and beautifully rational when he
did speak, so that fear came gradually to leave the old man's heart for
longer and longer intervals. Indeed, one day when Bernal had long lain
silent, he swept lingering doubts from the old man's mind by saying, with
a curious little air of embarrassment, yet with a return of that old-time
playful assumption of equality between them--"I'm afraid, old man, I may
have been a little queer in my talk--back there."

The old man's heart leaped with hope at this, though the acknowledgment
struck him as being inadequate to the circumstance it referred to.

"You _were_ flighty, boy, now and then," he replied, in quite the same
glossing strain of inadequacy.

"I can't tell you how queerly things came back to me--some bits of
consciousness and memory came early and some came late--and they're still
struggling along in that disorderly procession. Even yet I've not been
able to take st