business. You change business, you can't risk sen' for yo' wife. Well,
good-night."

Richling was left to his thoughts. Naturally they were of the man whom
he still saw, in his imagination, picking his jailer up off the
door-step and going back to prison. Who could say that this man might
not any day make just such a lion's leap into the world's arena as
Garibaldi had made, and startle the nations as Garibaldi had done? What
was that red-shirted scourge of tyrants that this man might not be?
Sailor, soldier, hero, patriot, prisoner! See Garibaldi: despising the
restraints of law; careless of the simplest conventionalities that go to
make up an honest gentleman; doing both right and wrong--like a lion;
everything in him leonine. All this was in Ristofalo's reach. It was all
beyond Richling's. Which was best, the capability or the incapability?
It was a question he would have liked to ask Mary.

Well, at any rate, he had strength now for one thing--"one pretty small
thing." He would answer her letter. He answered it, and wrote: "Don't
come; wait a little while." He put aside all those sweet lovers'
pictures that had been floating before his eyes by night and day, and
bade her stay until the summer, with its risks to health, should have
passed, and she could leave her mother well and strong.

It was only a day or two afterward that he fell sick. It was provoking
to have such a cold and not know how he caught it, and to have it in
such fine weather. He was in bed some days, and was robbed of much sleep
by a cough. Mrs. Reisen found occasion to tell Dr. Sevier of Mary's
desire, as communicated to her by "Mr. Richlin'," and of the advice she
had given him.

"And he didn't send for her, I suppose."

"No, sir."

"Well, Mrs. Reisen, I wish you had kept your advice to yourself." The
Doctor went to Richling's bedside.

"Richling, why don't you send for your wife?"

The patient floundered in the bed and drew himself up on his pillow.

"O Doctor, just listen!" He smiled incredulously. "Bring that little
woman and her baby down here just as the hot season is beginning?" He
thought a moment, and then continued: "I'm afraid, Doctor, you're
prescribing for homesickness. Pray don't tell me that's my ailment."

"No, it's not. You have a bad cough, that you must take care of; but
still, the other is one of the counts in your case, and you know how
quickly Mary and--the little girl would cure it."

Richling smiled again.

"I