ted up fiercely when he saw her; then he stood back and waited.
The doctor bent over Lot and began counting his pulse. He eyed him
sharply.

"The pendulum still swings," said Lot.

The doctor started. "You can speak, then!" he cried out, brusquely.

Lot smiled.

The doctor was old, and his long struggle with birth and death had
begun to tell upon him. He had already visited Lot that morning,
after a hard night with a patient, back in the hills. His face was
haggard under its sharp gray bristle of beard; his eyes fierce, like
an old dog's, with fatigue and hunger. He had just reached home and
sat down to his breakfast when this new call came. He had thought Lot
was dying from Madelon's imperative summons, and she had not
undeceived him. She was growing cunning in her desperate efforts to
save Burr Gordon.

"What in thunder did ye send for me again for?" he snapped. This old
country doctor was never chary of plain speaking, and his brusqueness
had increased his popularity. Many of his patients were simple
countrywomen, who had greater belief in that which they feared. They
repeated his half-savage speeches to each other, and added, "He's a
good doctor, if he does speak out."

Lot only smiled that covert smile of his, which seemed to imply some
wisdom of humor beyond the ken of others. "I ought to be dying," he
said, with grim apology. "I ought not--to have disturbed you all for
a less reason than to witness my final exit, but I want you to
witness something else." Lot Gordon spoke quite strongly and
connectedly.

"What?" asked the doctor, irritably.

"I want to make a statement," said Lot Gordon.

There was a pause. Jonas Hapgood, with his look of heavy
facetiousness, slightly tempered now with curiosity, stood lounging
into his great snowy boots at the foot of the bed. Parson Fair, the
consolation for the dying which he had thought to administer still in
his mind, which could not swerve easily, his slender height in his
black surtout inclined towards the sick man with gentle courtesy,
waited. Margaret Bean peered around the bed-curtain. Madelon stood
near the doctor, her face white as if she were dead, and a look of
awful listening upon it. In the background David Hautville, wrathful
and wondering, towered over them all.

"I wish to declare in the presence of these witnesses," said Lot
Gordon, "the doctor here testifying that I am in my right mind"--the
doctor gave a surly grunt of assent--"that it is my f