mething was amiss.

"Where is Mr. Keller?" I asked.

"In bed, David."

"Not ill, I hope?"

"I don't know what is the matter with him, my dear boy. He says he has
passed a bad night, and he can't leave his bed and attend to business as
usual. Is it the close air of the theater, do you think?"

"Suppose I make him a comfortable English cup of tea?" I suggested.

"Yes, yes! And take it up yourself. I should like to know what you think
of him."

Mr. Keller alarmed me in the first moment when I looked at him. A
dreadful apathy had possessed itself of this naturally restless and
energetic man. He lay quite motionless, except an intermittent trembling
of his hands as they rested on the counterpane. His eyes opened for a
moment when I spoke to him--then closed again as if the effort of looking
at anything wearied him. He feebly shook his head when I offered him the
cup of tea, and said in a fretful whisper, "Let me be!" I looked at his
night-drink. The jug and glass were both completely empty. "Were you
thirsty in the night?" In the same fretful whisper he answered,
"Horribly!" "Are you not thirsty now?" He only repeated the words he had
first spoken--"Let me be!" There he lay, wanting nothing, caring for
nothing; his face looking pinched and wan already, and the intermittent
trembling still at regular intervals shaking his helpless hands.

We sent at once for the physician who had attended him in trifling
illnesses at former dates.

The doctor who is not honest enough to confess it when he is puzzled, is
a well-known member of the medical profession in all countries. Our
present physician was one of that sort. He pronounced the patient to be
suffering from low (or nervous) fever--but it struck Mr. Engelman, as it
struck me, that he found himself obliged to say something, and said it
without feeling sure of the correctness of his own statement. He
prescribed, and promised to pay us a second visit later in the day.
Mother Barbara, the housekeeper, was already installed as nurse. Always a
domestic despot, she made her tyranny felt even in the sick-room. She
declared that she would leave the house if any other woman presumed to
enter it as nurse. "When my master is ill," said Mother Barbara, "my
master is my property." It was plainly impossible that a woman, at her
advanced age, could keep watch at the bedside by day and night together.
In the interests of peace we decided on waiting until the next day. If
Mr. Keller sh