"You will hardly know where you are till you find yourself safe in your
berth," said Dr. Killmany; "and to avoid any delay after the operation,
from which you will necessarily be somewhat weak, you had perhaps better
pay me now." And these were the most civil words he had yet spoken.

So Hobert paid into his hand the last dollar he had.

"Now, sir," he said; and Hobert laid himself down on the table. A
minute, and of what befell him after that he was quite unconscious. It
was as the doctor had told him; he knew not where he was until he found
himself in his berth aboard the Arrow. "Where am I?" was his first
inquiry, feeling a sense of strangeness,--feeling, indeed, as though he
were a stranger to himself.

"You are going home, my poor friend,--going home a little sooner than
you expected,--that is all."

Then the sick man opened his eyes; for he had recognized the tender
voice, and saw Dr. Shepard bending over him, and he knew where he was,
and what had happened; for he was shivering from head to foot. The
sleeve of his right arm was red and wet, and there was a dull, slow
aching in his bosom. "Ay, Doctor," he answered, pressing faintly the
hand that held his, "I am going home,--home to a better country. 'T is
all like a shadow about me now, and I am cold,--so cold!" He never came
out of that chill, and these were the last words he ever spoke.

"That man has been just the same as murdered, I take it!" exclaimed the
captain of the Arrow, meeting Dr. Shepard as he turned away from the
bedside.

"I must not say that," replied the Doctor; "but if I had performed the
operation, under the circumstances, I should think myself his murderer."

"And if you had taken his money, you would perhaps think yourself a
thief, too! At any rate, I should think you one," was the answer of the
captain. And he then related to Dr. Shepard how the man, in an almost
dying condition, had been brought aboard the Arrow by one of Dr.
Killmany's menials, hustled into bed, and so left to his fate; and he
concluded by saying, "And what are we to do now, Doctor?"

What the Doctor's reply was need not be reported at length. Suffice it
to say, that the departure of the Arrow was deferred for an hour, and
when she sailed the state-room in which Hobert had breathed his last was
occupied by a lively little lady and two gayly-dressed children, and on
the wall from which the fur hat and the saddle-bags had been removed
fluttered a variety of rainbow-