strong faith in his skill, if they had strong
doubts of his orthodoxy. Externally he conformed to the requirements of
the Church: heard mass of Sundays, and went once a year to the
confessional; for this much is a police regulation, a tax upon
conscience which every Roman is bound to pay. But he was too much behind
the scenes to do it with a good will, and saw professionally too much of
the daily life of the clergy, looked too freely and too closely at some
of their "pleasant vices," to feel much reverence either for them or for
their teachings.

Suddenly his chair, for he was professor in the medical college, was
taken from him: a warning, thought his friends, that unfriendly eyes
were upon him; and so, also, thought some of his patients, and called in
a new physician. Still his general practice continued large; and
although he found a little more time for his wife,--for a father to sit
in, in darkness and silence, and recall the sunny faces and sweet
prattle of his children. But he felt that unseen eyes might be watching
him even there, and that a sigh, though breathed never so softly, might
reach the ears of some who would rejoice in it and come all the more
confidently to the work they had resolved to do upon him. So, setting
down his lamp, he made two or three turns across the room, and then,
drawing out his watch, as if to assure himself that it was bedtime,
deliberately undressed and went to bed.

And to sleep?

You will not call him coward, if with closed eyes he lay wakeful upon
his pillow, thinking over the last hour with a heart that beat quick,
though it faltered not, listening vainly for some sound to break the
unearthly silence, and longing for daylight, if, indeed, the light of
day was permitted to visit that lonely cell. It came at last, the
daylight,--though not as it was wont to come to him in his own dear
home, with a fresh morning breath and a fresher song of birds, waking
familiar voices and greeted with endearing accents. How would it be in
that home this morning? How had it been there through the slow hours of
that feverish night? How was it to be thenceforth with those precious
ones, and with him too, whom they all looked to for guidance and
counsel?

He got up and dressed himself a little more carefully than usual,
resolved that there should be no outside telltales of the thoughts that
were struggling within. He had hardly finished dressing when the door
opened. Neither footsteps in the co