nderstanding her.

CHAPTER LXXIX.

A SLOW TRANSITION.

A dreary time followed. Sometimes the patient would lie awake half the
night, howling with misery, and accusing Donal of heartless cruelty. He
knew as well as he what would ease his pain and give him sleep, but not
a finger would he move to save him! He was taking the meanest of
revenges! What did it matter to him what became of his soul! Surely it
was worse to hate as he made him hate than to swallow any amount of
narcotics!

"I tell you, Grant," he said once, "I was never so cruel to those I
treated worst. There's nothing in the Persian hells, which beat all the
rest, to come up to what I go through for want of my comfort. Promise
to give it me, and I will tell you where to find some."

As often as Donal refused he would break out in a torrent of curses,
then lie still for a space.

"How do you think you will do without it," Donal once rejoined, "when
you find yourself bodiless in the other world?"

"I'm not there yet! When that comes, it will be under new conditions,
if not unconditioned altogether. We'll take the world we have. So, my
dear boy, just go and get me what I want. There are the keys!"

"I dare not."

"You wish to kill me!"

"I wouldn't keep you alive to eat opium. I have other work than that.
Not a finger would I move to save a life for such a life. But I would
willingly risk my own to make you able to do without it. There would be
some good in that!"

"Oh, damn your preaching!"

But the force of the habit abated a little. Now and then it seemed to
return as strong as ever, but the fit went off again. His sufferings
plainly decreased.

The doctor, having little yet of a practice, was able to be with him
several hours every day, so that Donal could lie down. As he grew
better, Davie, or mistress Brookes, or lady Arctura would sit with him.
But Donal was never farther off than the next room. The earl's madness
was the worst of any, a moral madness: it could not fail to affect the
brain, but had not yet put him beyond his own control. Repeatedly had
Donal been on the verge of using force to restrain him, but had not yet
found himself absolutely compelled to do so: fearless of him, he
postponed it always to the very last, and the last had not yet arrived.

The gentle ministrations of his niece by and by seemed to touch him. He
was growing to love her a little, He would smile when she came into the
room, and ask her how she did. O