ut of the sick room, the world--the maddening
press of affairs, and the combat in his soul--snapped back on his
shoulders with a mental click as though a load had fallen into its old
place. He stood before his organ, and could not press the keys. As he
sat there in the twilight made by the shaded electric lamps, the
struggle rose in his heart against the admission of anything into his
scheme of life but material things, and the conflict raged unchecked.
What a silliness, he said, to think that the mummery of a woman over a
rose could affect a life. Life is what the succession of the days
brings. The thing is or is not, he said to himself, and the gibber
about prayer and the moral force that moves the universe is for the
weak-minded. So he took his hell to bed with him as it went every
night, and during the heavy hours when he could not sleep, he tiptoed
into the sick room, and looked at the thin face of his wife, sleeping
a restless, feverish sleep, and a great fear came into his heart.

Once as the morning dawned he asked the nurse whom he met in the hall,
"Is it typhoid?"

She was a stranger to the town, and she said to him, "What does the
doctor tell you?"

"That's not the point," he insisted. "What do you think?"

She looked at him for an undecided moment and replied, "I'm not paid
to think, Mr. Barclay," and went past him with her work. But he knew
the truth. He went to his bed, and threw himself upon it, a-tremble
with remorse and fear, and the sneer in his heart stilled his lips and
he could not look outside himself for help. So the morning came, and
another day, bringing its thousand cares, faced him, like a jailer
with his tortures.

Time dragged slowly in the sick room and at the mill. One doctor
brought another, and the Barclay private car went far east and came
flying back with a third. The town knew that Mrs. John Barclay was
dangerously sick. There came hopeful days when the patient's mind was
clear; on one of these days Mrs. McHurdie called, and they let her see
the sick woman. She brought some flowers.

"In the flowers, Jane," she said, "you will find something from
Watts." Mrs. McHurdie smiled. "You know he sat up till 'way after
midnight last night, playing his accordion. Oh, it's been years since
he has touched it. And this morning when I got up, I found him sitting
by the kitchen table, writing. It's a poem for you." Mrs. McHurdie
looked rather sheepish as she said: "You know how Watts is, Jan