's no trouble about that! Walk boldly along; he won't
notice--"

"_He won't notice_?"

"No, he notices nothing but what comes from the sick room."

"I see." Sweetwater's jaw had fallen, but it righted itself at this
last word.

"Listening, eh?"

"Yes--as a fellow never listened before."

"Expectant like?"

"Yes, I should call it expectant."

"Does the nurse know this?"

"The nurse is a puzzler."

"How so?"

"Half nurse and half--but go see for yourself. Here's a package to take
in,--medicine from the drug store. Tell her there was no one else to
bring it up. She'll show no surprise."

Muttering his thanks, Sweetwater seized the proffered package, and
hastened with it down the hall. He had been as far as the turn before,
but now he passed the turn to find, just as he expected, a closed door on
the left and an open alcove on the right. The door led into Miss
Cumberland's room; the alcove, circular in shape and lighted by several
windows, projected from the rear of the extension, and had for its
outlook the stable and the huge sycamore tree growing beside it.

Sweetwater's fingers passed thoughtfully across his chin as he remarked
this and took in the expressive outline of its one occupant. He could
not see his face; that was turned towards the table before which he sat.
But his drooping head, rigid with desperate thinking; his relaxed hand
closed around the neck of a decanter which, nevertheless, he did not
lift, made upon Sweetwater an impression which nothing he saw afterwards
ever quite effaced.

"When I come back, that whiskey will be half gone," thought he, and
lingered to see the tumbler filled and the first draught taken.

But no. The hand slowly unclasped and fell away from the decanter; his
head sank forward until his chin rested on his breast; and a sigh,
startling to Sweetwater, fell from his lips. Hexford was right; only one
thing could arouse him.

Sweetwater now tried that thing. He knocked softly on the sick-room door.

This reached the ear oblivious to all else. Young Cumberland started to
his feet; and for a moment Sweetwater saw again the heavy features
which, an hour before, had produced such a repulsive effect upon him in
the rooms below. Then the nerveless figure sank again into place, with
the same constraint in its lines, and the same dejection.

Sweetwater's hand, lifted in repetition of his knock, hung suspended. He
had not expected quite such indifference as this. It upset