ad. Oh, how the sick man is pressing my hand with his cramped
fingers! This method of treatment is working wonders."

Szephalmi sank back into the depths of his arm-chair and shivered as if
with an ague fit.

"The rich man, however, abandoned the bride on the very day of the
wedding, and in that same year the elder Hetfalusy suddenly grew grey.
You see, sir, I am well informed. A doctor ought to know every little
detail relating to a case if he is to cure the patient. The father was
now ready to let his daughter marry her former lover, but you were no
longer inclined for such a marriage. One day, however, the girl went to
you of her own accord, with the face of a lunatic, and threatened..."

"Hush, sir! for Heaven's sake!"

"Ah! how much more rapidly his blood is circulating. His muscles are
twitching, his lips are convulsed, his arteries begin to throb--the girl
threatened to reveal the fact that she had killed her child and so mount
the scaffold, unless you made her your wife."

The sick man began to throw about his arms, and cold drops of sweat,
like transparent pearls, welled forth from his forehead. Szephalmi arose
and walked about the room wringing his hands.

"Who told you that?" he asked the stranger, suddenly planting himself
right in front of him.

"Softly, sir, you are disturbing me. The patient is about to take a
favourable turn, look how he is sweating. His sufferings are violent,
and I am glad to see them, it shows that his vital energy is returning.
Repose is a symptom of death, pain is a sign of life. Let us go on with
our magnetising. These long passes from the temples to the shoulders
work wonders. The whole soul of the sick man now clings to the thought
that just because he himself cast forth his first grandchild, which he
hated, therefore God took from him the other two which he loved. Notice,
sir! that heaving bosom, those fiery red eyes, those swelling lips--all
of them are in their way the interpreters of that one thought. God has
punished him and you, the father and the grandfather; He has removed
from you the blessing which you rejected of your own accord, and now you
stand by yourselves in the world, so lonely, so comfortless, joined to
each other by nothing but the recollection of a terrible loss."

Szephalmi buried his head among the pillows of the speechless invalid
and sobbed bitterly.

Then the youth arose and took the old man's hand in his hand, gazed
steadily into his burning e