bed this summer morning. He was a sluggard, he said to
himself. He must go forth and do things--for Her. He raised his arm to
throw open the shutter.

Ah! The arm would not rise! At least the man could not extend it far
enough to open the shutter. There was a twinge of pain and a strange
stiffness of the elbow. The other arm was raised--nothing the matter
with that. The man tried to move his legs. The left responded, but the
right was as useless as the arm. There was a pain, too, across the loins
as Markham sought to turn himself in bed. He was astonished. There had
been no pain until he moved. "What's the matter with me?" he muttered.
"I'm crippled; but how, and why?"

There was quietude for a few moments and then more deliberate effort.
With his unaffected leg and arm, the victim of physical circumstances he
could not explain worked himself around as if upon a pivot until the
preponderance of his weight was outside the bed. Then, with vast
caution, he tilted himself upward gently until he found himself sitting
upon the bed's edge, his feet just touching the floor, and the crippled
member refusing to bear weight. Markham bore down upon the right foot.
It was stiff and seemed as if it would break before it bent, while the
pain was exquisite, but the man could not stay where he was. He got down
upon the floor and crawled toward his clothing. He contrived, somehow,
to dress himself, but the task accomplished, his face was pallid and he
was wet with perspiration. He tilted himself to his feet and creeping
along by the wall, reached the elevator and so finally the office floor.

There was a tinkle of glasses in the hotel saloon, and through the open
door came the fragrance of mint and pineapple. There was a white-clad,
wax-mustached man behind the bar in there, who, as Markham knew, could
make a morning cocktail "to raise the dead," and not to raise them stark
and rigid, like the bodies in Dora's "Judgment Day," but flexile and
full of life. "Jack could mix me something that would help," he thought,
and turned instinctively, but checked himself. More than a year had
passed since he had tasted a morning cocktail. There had been a promise
in the way. He looked down at his knee and foot. "Let them twist," he
said, and then called for a cab.

He did not like to do it; it was a confession of weakness, but in his
own apartments again, and in bed as the only restful place, Markham sent
for a doctor. The doctor came, not the pon