y cost. He kept bawling at him, the messenger said. Bawling at
him, Joseph repeated after the messenger, and the messenger repeated the
words, bawling at him, and saying that the physician said the master's
swoon was like a wall and that he must get him to hear him somehow. He
said the effort would cost your father, Sir, a great deal, but he must
get him to hear him. The story as the servant related it seemed
incredible, but he reflected that servants' stories are always
incredible, and Joseph learned with increasing wonder that Dan had heard
the physician and sat up in bed and spoken reasonably, but had fallen
back again unconscious, and that the physician on leaving him said that
they must get his mouth open somehow and pour a spoonful of milk into
his mouth, and call upon him as loudly as they could to swallow. What
physician have they sent for? Joseph asked the messenger, but he could
not remember the name.

It was Ecanus who was sitting by Dan's bedside when Joseph arrived, and
Joseph learnt by careful nursing and feeding him every ten minutes there
was just a chance of saving Dan's life.

For seven days Dan's life receded, and it was not till the eighth day
the wheel of life paused on the edge of the abyss. Dan, with his eyes
turned up under the eyelids, only the white showing, lay motionless; and
it was not till the morning of the ninth day that the wheel began to
revolve back again; but so slow were its revolutions that Joseph was in
doubt for two or three days. But on the fifth day he was sure that Dan
was mending, and in about three days more the pupils of Dan's eyes
looked at his son's from under the eyelids. He spoke a few words and
took his milk more easily, without being asked to swallow. The pains in
his head returned with consciousness; he often moaned; the doctor was
obliged to give him opiates, but he continued to mend and in three weeks
was speaking of going out to walk in the garden. To gain his end he
often showed a certain childish cunning, urging Joseph on one occasion
to go to the verandah to see if somebody was coming up the garden, and
as soon as Joseph's back was turned he slipped out of bed with the
intention of getting to his clothes. He fell, without, however, hurting
himself, and was put back to bed and kept there for three more weeks
before he was allowed a short walk. Even then the concession seemed to
be given too soon; for he could not distinguish the different trees, nor
could he see