anxiously, with a dull presentiment of evil.

The days went by, cold and slow. He watched grimly the preparations
the hospital physician was silently making in his case, for fever,
inflammation.

"I must be strong enough to go out cured on Christmas eve," he said to
him one day, coolly.

The old doctor glanced up shrewdly. He was an old Alsatian, very
plain-spoken.

"You say so?" he mumbled. "Chut! Then you will go. There are
some--bull-dog men. They do what they please,--they never die unless
they choose, begar! We know them in our practice, Herr Holmes!"

Holmes laughed. Some acumen there, he thought, in medicine or mind: as
for himself, it was true enough; whatever success he had gained in life
had been by no flush of enthusiasm or hope; a dogged persistence of
"holding on," rather.

Christmas eve came at last; bright, still, frosty. "Whatever he had to
do, let it be done quickly "; but not till the set hour came. So he laid
his watch on the table beside him, waiting until it should mark the time
he had chosen: the ruling passion of self-control as strong in this turn
of life's tide as it would be in its ebb, at the last. The old doctor
found him alone in the dreary room, coming in with the frosty breath of
the eager street about him. A grim, chilling sight enough, as solitary
and impenetrable as the Sphinx. He did not like such faces in this
genial and gracious time, so hurried over his examination. The eye was
cool, the pulse steady, the man's body, battered though it was, strong
in its steely composure. "_Ja wohl!--ja wohl_!" he went on chuffily,
summing up: latent fever,--the very lips were blue, dry as husks; "he
would go,--_oui_?--then go!"--with a chuckle. "All right, _glueck zu_!"
And so shuffled out latent fever? Doubtless, yet hardly from broken
bones, the doctor thought,--with no suspicion of the subtile,
intolerable passion smouldering in every drop of this man's phlegmatic
blood.

Evening came at last. He stopped until the cracked bell of the chapel
had done striking the Angelus, and then put on his overcoat, and went
out. The air was cold and pungent. The crowded city seemed wakening to
some keen enjoyment; even his own weak, deliberate step rang on the
icy pavement as if it wished to rejoice with the rest. I said it was a
trading city: so it was, but the very trade to-day had a jolly Christmas
face on; the surly old banks and pawnbrokers' shops had grown ashamed
of their doings, and shut thei