g all the manual toil
on Duncan, it was an open secret that Opdyke supplied the brains.

However, no amount of professional contentment can quite atone for the
strain of many sleepless nights; and, more than once that summer,
Doctor Keltridge had been strongly tempted to call a halt in the whole
undertaking. Then, at the last minute, he had stayed his prohibition.
Opdyke, in all surety, was working far beyond his strength. None the
less, it seemed to the old doctor that there would be a certain cruelty
in bringing to a sudden halt this sole activity permitted to him, this
sole means of contact with his old profession. The doctor spent his
summer between the horns of a dilemma: his disapproval of Reed's
overworking, his greater disapproval of the need for thrusting Reed
back into his former impotence. And, to all seeming, there was no
middle ground. It would have taxed the strength even of a full-bodied
man to have held together a reputation, under such handicaps as those
beneath which Reed was working. The doctor grumbled in his throat at
Ramsdell; but he spoke out no word to Reed. For the present, he was
well aware, he had power to dominate the situation.

And so the cold, wet July rolled along; and then came an August,
drearier, more chilly. The sweet New England summer was drowned in a
cold, raw fog which only broke at intervals into a day of blazing
sunshine which set all the world a-steam. It was a hideous season, even
for the prosperous vagrants of society. To Reed, imprisoned in his room
and in a town empty of all his friends but two or three, it was
well-nigh insupportable. Brenton dropped in upon him, half a dozen
times a week, and Olive never missed a day, while Duncan was
invaluable. Nevertheless, it was plain that the summer was wearing on
the "puffic' fibbous," although his old-time beauty was bidding fair to
outlast the malign attacks of fortune. Indeed, to Olive Keltridge, it
seemed that Opdyke never had been one half so good to look upon as now,
never one half so virile.

"Most men would be impossible in such a situation," she said to her
father, one morning in early August. "You would be a caricature, and,
as for a man like Mr. Brenton--"

"Hush! Speak of angels!" her father warned her. Then, in another tone,
he added, "Morning, Brenton. You're up early; aren't you?"

But Brenton's face refused to light in answer to the doctor's greeting.

"I've had a telegram from Boston," he said, and his accent