nnounced that both the commodores had
gone to rest but that madame was anxious to come back to the invalid the
moment he would permit. She added, unasked, that Captain Hugh was in the
captain's chair.

The hour passed and Julian reappeared. The partial relief of mind which
had come to all the others had in degree reached him. It enabled him, as
he came down the wheel-house stair, to reflect, though with a shudder,
upon that furious treatment which alone, he had somewhere heard, would
counteract an opium poisoning, and upon Lucian's utter inability to
endure any part of such a treatment. He found Ramsey hearkening at the
door again, newly disquieted. The two servants were out at the rail of
the wide guards.

"Ought his breathing," she said, "to sound like that?"

Julian thought not, but even a sister's solicitude offended his lifelong
sentiment of paramount ownership in his brother. "Stand away, I'll let
you know," he replied, passed in, and closed the door.

Then all at once, as so often has happened to so many of us, he saw his
heedlessness where he had fancied himself vigilant. The light was dim.
He knelt close to the sleeper. One long stare into the pale yet livid
face was enough. Lucian was dying. Julian leaped to his feet to seek aid
but saw its futility and fell again to his knees. Lucian was dying of
the "black-drop" which his brother, in haughty ignorance, by the hand of
Phyllis, had given him.

Presently Julian found voice, yet, mindful still of the listening
Ramsey, let himself only softly murmur: "Oh, Lucian, my brother! Oh,
Lucian, my twin brother! I've killed you, killed you twice over, my twin
brother! God! but you're right not to live a cripple. And it was I who
crippled you! Oh, Lucian, I'm the cripple now!"

Ramsey tapped. He sprang to the door and without opening it answered:
"Yes, in a minute. He--he's all right."

At the wash-stand he lifted the phial of black-drop still half full. As
quietly as if the dose were a dram at the bar he filled the
measuring--glass and drank its last drop. Then he turned to the door and
barely opened it.

"He's all right, Ramsey.... Yes.... Yes. He's done just the right thing.
So have I. Now, go away, please, wherever you like, only
don't--stay--here just to bother us. I'll merely lie down beside him
without--What?... No, go away! You'll find us all right in the morning."

LXIII

THE CAPTAIN'S CHAIR

On the next afternoon but one, while hundreds went