friends again, these two; he had told himself that, not once, but many
times during the weary hours of his watching beside John Saltram's
sick-bed. They could never more be friends; and yet he found himself in a
manner compelled to perform the offices of friendship. Nor was it easy to
preserve anything like the neutral standing which he had designed for
himself. The life of this sometime friend of his hung by so frail a link,
he had such utter need of kindness; so what could Gilbert do but console
him for the loss of his wife, and endeavour to inspire him with a hopeful
spirit about her? What could he do less than friendship would have done,
although his affection for this old friend of his youth had perished for
evermore? The task of consolation was not an easy one. Once restored to
his right mind, with a vivid sense of all that had happened to him before
his illness, John Saltram was not to be beguiled into a false security.
The idea that his wife was in dangerous hands pursued him perpetually,
and the consciousness of his own impotence to rescue her goaded him to a
kind of mental fever.

"To be chained here, Gilbert, lying on this odious bed like a dog, when
she needs my help! How am I to bear it?"

"Like a man," the other answered quietly. "Were you as well as I am this
moment, there's nothing you could do that I am not doing. Do you think I
should sit idly here, if the best measures had not been taken to find
your wife?"

"Forgive me. Yes; I have no doubt you have done what is best. But if I
were astir, I should have the sense of doing something. I could urge on
those people you employ, work with them even."

"You would be more likely to hinder than to assist them. They know their
work, and it is a slow drudging business at best, which requires more
patience than you possess. No, John, there is nothing to be done but to
wait, and put our trust in Providence and in time."

This was a sermon which Gilbert Fenton had occasion to preach very often
in the slow weary days that followed John Saltram's recovery of his right
senses. The sick man, tossing to and fro upon the bed he loathed with
such an utter loathing, could not refrain from piteous bewailings of his
helplessness. He was not a good subject for sickness, had never served
his apprenticeship to a sick-bed until now, and the ordeal seemed to him
a very long one. In all that period of his delirious wanderings there had
been an exaggerated sense of time in his