er had one of them been in the same
helpless position at his feet?

He had come forth in sorry plight from that struggle, and now he
was weakened by his accident, and unable to watch Mehetabel as
fully as he would have wished.

The caution spoken by the surgeon that he should not retard his
recovery by impatience and restlessness was unheeded.

He was wakeful at night, tossing on his bed from side to side. He
complained of this to the surgeon, who, on his next visit, brought
him a bottle of laudanum.

"Now look here," said he; "I will not put this in your hands. You
are too hasty and unreliable to be entrusted with it. Your wife
shall have it. It is useful, if taken in small quantities, just a
drop or two, but if too much be taken by accident, then you will
fall into a sleep from which there is no awaking. I can quite
fancy that you in your irritable mood, because you could not sleep,
would give yourself an overdose, and then--there would be the
deuce to pay."

"And suppose that my wife were to overdose me?" asked the sick man
suspiciously.

"That is not a suspicion I can entertain," said the surgeon, with
a bow of his head in the direction of Mehetabel, "I have found her
thoughtful, exact, and trustworthy. And so you have found her, I
will swear, Mr. Kink, in all your domestic life?"

The Broom-Squire muttered something unintelligible, and turned a
way.

When the laudanum arrived, he took the bottle and examined it. A
death's head and crossbones were on the label. He took out the
cork, and smelt the contents of the phial.

Though worn out with want of sleep he refused to touch any of the
sedative. He was afraid to trust Mehetabel with the bottle, and
afraid to mix his own portion lest in his nervous excitement he
might overdo the dose.

Neither would he suffer the laudanum to be administered to him by
his sister. As he said to her with a sneer, "A drop too much would
give you a chance of my farm, which you won't have so long as I
live."

"How can you talk like that?" said Sally. "Haven't you got a wife?
Wouldn't the land go to her?"

The land, the house--to Mehetabel, and with his removal, then the
way would be opened for Iver as well.

The thought was too much for Jonas. He left his bed, and carried
the phial of opium to a little cupboard he had in the wall, that
he kept constantly locked. This he now opened, and within it he
placed the bottle. "Better endure my sleepless nights than be
rocked to