r had brightened him, though
it was the chill, I suppose, that brought on the pains in his breast,
which, fortunately, he had escaped during the voyage. It was not a
prolonged attack, and it was, blessedly, the last one.

An invalid-carriage had been provided, and a compartment secured on the
afternoon express to Redding--the same train that had taken him there
two years before. Dr. Robert H. Halsey and Dr. Edward Quintard attended
him, and he made the journey really in cheerful comfort, for he could
breathe now, and in the relief came back old interests. Half reclining
on the couch, he looked through the afternoon papers. It happened
curiously that Charles Harvey Genung, who, something more than four
years earlier, had been so largely responsible for my association with
Mark Twain, was on the same train, in the same coach, bound for his
country-place at New Hartford.

Lounsbury was waiting with the carriage, and on that still, sweet April
evening we drove him to Stormfield much as we had driven him two years
before. Now and then he mentioned the apparent backwardness of the
season, for only a few of the trees were beginning to show their green.
As we drove into the lane that led to the Stormfield entrance, he said:

"Can we see where you have built your billiard-room?"

The gable showed above the trees, and I pointed it out to him.

"It looks quite imposing," he said.

I think it was the last outside interest he ever showed in anything. He
had been carried from the ship and from the train, but when we drew
up to Stormfield, where Mrs. Paine, with Katie Leary and others of the
household, was waiting to greet him, he stepped from the carriage alone
with something of his old lightness, and with all his old courtliness,
and offered each one his hand. Then, in the canvas chair which we had
brought, Claude and I carried him up-stairs to his room and delivered
him to the physicians, and to the comforts and blessed air of home. This
was Thursday evening, April 14, 1910.

CCXCIII. THE RETURN TO THE INVISIBLE

There would be two days more before Ossip and Clara Gabrilowitsch could
arrive. Clemens remained fairly bright and comfortable during this
interval, though he clearly was not improving. The physicians denied him
the morphine, now, as he no longer suffered acutely. But he craved it,
and once, when I went in, he said, rather mournfully:

"They won't give me the subcutaneous any more."

It was Sunday morning