surely, if indirectly, brought
their doom upon them. "A doctor is not infallible, he may make
mistakes." Quite so, and if a mistake of his should kill a few
thousands, why, that is the act of God (or of Fate) working through his
blindness. But if it does not happen to have been a mistake, if, for
instance, all those dead, should they still live in any place or shape,
could say to me, "James Therne, you are the murderer of our bodies,
since, for your own ends, you taught us that which you knew _not_ to be
the truth."

How then? I ask. So--let them say it if they will. Let all that great
cloud of witnesses compass me about, lads and maidens, children and
infants, whose bones cumber the churchyards yonder in Dunchester. I defy
them, for it is done and cannot be undone. Yet, in their company are two
whose eyes I dread to meet: Jane, my daughter, whose life was sacrificed
through me, and Ernest Merchison, her lover, who went to seek her in the
tomb.

They would not reproach me now, I know, for she was too sweet and loved
me too well with all my faults, and, if he proved pitiless in the
first torment of his loss, Merchison was a good and honest man, who,
understanding my remorse and misery, forgave me before he died. Still,
I dread to meet them, who, if that old fable be true and they live, read
me for what I am. Yet why should I fear, for all this they knew before
they died, and, knowing, could forgive? Surely it is with another
vengeance that I must reckon.

Well, after her mother's death my daughter was the only being whom I
ever truly loved, and no future mental hell that the imagination can
invent would have power to make me suffer more because of her than I
have always suffered since the grave closed over her--the virgin martyr
sacrificed on the altar of a false prophet and a coward.

I come of a family of doctors. My grandfather, Thomas Therne, whose
name still lives in medicine, was a doctor in the neighbourhood of
Dunchester, and my father succeeded to his practice and nothing else,
for the old gentleman had lived beyond his means. Shortly after my
father's marriage he sold this practice and removed into Dunchester,
where he soon acquired a considerable reputation as a surgeon, and
prospered, until not long after my birth, just as a brilliant career
seemed to be opening itself to him, death closed his book for ever. In
attending a case of smallpox, about four months before I was born, he
contracted the disea