g up to within an hour or so of
the patient's decease.

"There is an extreme debility, that is all," he went on quite cheerfully;
"and if we can induce him to take plenty of nourishment, we shall get on
very well, I daresay."

After this the nervous passenger was profoundly interested in the amount
of refreshment consumed by the patient, and questioned the steward about
him with a most sympathetic air.

John Saltram, otherwise John Holbrook, was not destined to die upon this
outward voyage. He was very eager to be well, or at least to be at
liberty to move about again; and perhaps this impatient desire of his
helped in some measure to bring about his recovery. The will,
physiologists tell us, has a great deal to do with these things.

The voyage was a prosperous one. The good ship steamed gaily across the
Atlantic through the bleak spring weather; and there was plenty of eating
and drinking, and joviality and flirtation on board her, while John
Saltram lay upon his back, very helpless, languishing to be astir once
more.

During these long dreary days and nights he had contrived to send several
messages to the lady in the state-cabin, feeble pencil scrawls, imploring
her to come to him, telling her that he was very ill, at death's door
almost, and desired nothing so much as to see her, if only for a moment.
But the answer--by word of mouth of the steward or stewardess always--was
unfailingly to the same effect:--the lady in number 7 refused to hold any
communication with the sick gentleman.

"She's a hard one!" the steward remarked to the stewardess, when they
talked the matter over in a comfortable manner during the progress of a
snug little supper in the steward's cabin, "she must be an out-and-out
hard-hearted one to stand out against him like that, if he is her
husband, and I suppose he is. I told her to-day--when I took his
message--how bad he was, and that it was a chance if he ever went ashore
alive; but she was walking up and down deck with her father ten minutes
afterwards, laughing and talking like anything. I suppose he's been a bad
lot, Mrs. Peterson, and deserves no better from her; but still it does
seem hard to see him lying there, and his wife so near him, and yet
refusing to go and see him."

"I've no common patience with her," said the stewardess with acrimony;
"the cold-hearted creature!--flaunting about like that, with a sick
husband within a stone's throw of her. Suppose he is to blame, Mr.