of nervous strain. With a smothered
protest the nurse left, and Jim stood beside the bed with the telegrams.

"Read them to me, Jim," Ingolby repeated irritably. "Be quick."

They were not wires which Ingolby should have heard at the time, when
his wound was still inflamed, when he was still on the outer circle
of that artificial sleep which the opiates had secured. They were from
Montreal and New York, and, resolved from their half-hidden suggestion
into bare elements, they meant that henceforth others would do the work
he had done. They meant, in effect, that save for the few scores of
thousand dollars he had made, he was now where he was when he came West.

When Jim had finished reading them, Ingolby sank back on the pillows and
said quietly:

"All right, Jim. Put them in the drawer of the table and I'll answer
them to-morrow. I want to get a little more sleep, so give me a drink,
and then leave me alone--both nurse and you--till I ring the bell.
There's a bell on the table, isn't there?"

He stretched out a hand towards the table beside the bed, and Jim softly
pushed the bell under his fingers.

"That's right," he added. "Now, I'm not to be disturbed unless the
doctor comes. I'm all right, and I want to be alone and quiet. No one at
all in the room is what I want. You understand, Jim?"

"My head's just as good to get at what you want as ever it was, and you
goin' have what you want, I guess, while I'm on deck," was Jim's reply.

Jim put a glass of water into his hand. He drank very slowly, was indeed
only mechanically conscious that he was drinking, for his mind was far
away.

After he had put the glass down, Jim still stood beside the bed, looking
at him.

"Why don't you go, as I tell you, Jim?" Ingolby asked wearily.

"I'm goin'"--Jim tucked the bedclothes in carefully--"I'm goin', but,
boss, I jes' want to say dat dis thing goin' to come out all right
bime-by. There ain't no doubt 'bout dat. You goin' see everything, come
jes' like what you want--suh!"

Ingolby did not reply. He held out his hand, and black fingers shot over
and took it. A moment later the blind man was alone in the room.

The light of day vanished, and the stars came out. There was no moon,
but it was one of those nights of the West when millions of stars
glimmer in the blue vault above, and every planet and every star and
cluster of stars are so near that it might almost seem they could be
caught by an expert human hand. The air