r
pains were counteracting? Who can tell but I have deprived her of untold
joys which would have compensated a thousand times for those pains by
shortening them?"

"Doctor Gordon, you are morbid," James said, looking at him uneasily.

"How do you know I am morbid? Then that other--Mendon. Who is to say
that I was right even about that? It is probable I saved your life, and
possibly my own, as well as Clemency from misery. But who can say that
death would not have been better for both you and me than life, and even
misery for Clemency had that man lived? God had allowed him life upon
the earth. I may have shortened that life. He was a monster of
wickedness, but who can say that he was not a weapon of God, and that I
have not done incalculable mischief by depriving him of that weapon?
There is only one consolation which I have with regard to him; unless my
diagnosis was entirely at fault, he would have had that attack of
erysipelas anyway. I hardly think I deceive myself with regard to that,
and there is a very probable chance that the attack would have been
fatal. He had nearly lost his life twice before with the same disease.
That I know, and I do not think that unless the poison was already in
his blood, it would have developed so rapidly from that slight bruise.
So far as the simple wound from the dog went, he was in no danger
whatever. I have that consolation in his case, in not being absolutely
certain that I caused his death; I am not even absolutely sure that I
hastened it by any appreciable time. He might have been attacked that
very night with the disease. Still there is, and always will be, the
slight doubt."

"I don't think you ought to brood over that, Doctor Gordon," James said
soothingly. He went close to the older man and laid a hand upon his
shoulder. Gordon looked up at him, and his face was convulsed. He spoke
with solemn and tragic emphasis. "It is not for mortal man to interfere
with the ways of God, and he does so at his own peril," he said.

CHAPTER XIV

The confidence which Gordon had reposed in James seemed for a time to
have given him a measure of relief. While he never for an instant
appeared like his old self, while the games of euchre at Georgie K.'s
were not resumed, nor the boyish enjoyment of things, which James now
recognized to have been simply feverish attempts to live through the
horrible ordeal of his life and keep his sanity, while he had now
settled down into a state of