on whom the trouble had fallen; and he looked again and
again at the profile turned to the window, as fixed and set as though
it had been carved.

'Ah, patience is an exhausting virtue!' said he to himself. 'Verily it
is bearing--bearing up under the full weight; and the long bent spring
is the slower in rebounding in proportion to its inherent strength.
Poor lad, what protracted endurance it has been! There is health and
force in his face; no line of sin, nor sickness, nor worldly care, such
as it makes one's heart ache to see aging young faces; yet how utterly
unlike the face of one and-twenty! I had rather see it sadder than so
strangely settled and sedate! Shall I speak to him again? Not yet:
those green hill-sides, those fields and cattle, must refresh him
better than my clavers, after his grim stony mount of purgatory. I
wish it were a brighter day to greet him, instead of this gray damp
fog.'

The said fog prevented any semblance of sunset; but through the gray
moonlit haze, Leonard kept his face to the window, pertinaciously
clearing openings in the bedewed glass, as though the varying outline
of the horizon had a fascination for him. At last, after ten minutes
of glaring gas at a junction had by contrast rendered the mist
impenetrable, and reduced the view to brightened clouds of steam, and
to white telegraphic posts, erecting themselves every moment, with
their wires changing their perspective in incessant monotony, he ceased
his gaze, and sat upright in his place, with the same strange rigid
somnambulist air.

Dr. May resolved to rouse him.

'Well, Leonard,' he said, 'this has been a very long fever; but we are
well through it at last--with the young doctor from Paris to our aid.'

Probably Leonard only heard the voice, not the words, for he passed his
hand over his face, and looked up to the Doctor, saying dreamily, 'Let
me see! Is it all true?' and then, with a grave wistful look, 'It was
not I who did that thing, then?'

'My dear!' exclaimed the Doctor, starting forward, and catching hold of
his hand, 'have they brought you to this?'

'I always meant to ask you, if I ever saw you alone again,' said
Leonard.

'But you don't mean that you have imagined it!'

'Not constantly--not when any one was with me,' said Leonard, roused by
Dr. May's evident dismay; and drawn on by his face of anxious inquiry.
'At Milbank, I generally thought I remembered it just as they described
it in court, and th