is haggard face and writhing form to its
present state of placid repose, to meet his daughter's eyes and spare
her feelings.

She, on her part, was no less firm. Kneeling beside his couch, she took
his hand and met his eye composedly as she asked:

"Dear father, how do you feel now?"

"Not just so easy, love, as if I had laid me down here for an
afternoon's nap, yet in no more pain than I can very well bear."

"Dear father, what can I do for you?"

"You may bathe my forehead and lips with cologne, my dear," said the
doctor, not so much for the sake of the reviving perfume, as because he
knew it would comfort Clara to feel that she was doing something,
however slight, for him.

Traverse stood upon the opposite side of the bed fanning him.

In a few moments Mrs. Rocke re-entered the room, announcing that the two
old physicians from Staunton, Doctor Dawson and Doctor Williams, had
arrived.

"Show them up, Mrs. Rocke. Clara, love, retire while the physicians
remain with me," said Doctor Day.

Mrs. Rocke left the room to do his bidding. And Clara followed and
sought the privacy of her own apartment to give way to the overwhelming
grief which she could no longer resist.

As soon as she was gone the doctor also yielded to the force of the
suffering that he had been able to endure silently in her presence, and
writhed and groaned with agony--that wrung the heart of Traverse to
behold.

Presently the two physicians entered the room and approached the bed,
with expressions of sincere grief at beholding their old friend in such
a condition and a hope that they might speedily be able to relieve him.

To all of which the doctor, repressing all exhibitions of pain and
holding out his hand in a cheerful manner, replied:

"I am happy to see you in a friendly way, old friends! I am willing also
that you should try what you--what you can do for me--but I warn you
that it will be useless! A few hours or days of inflammation, fever and
agony, then the ease of mortification, then dissolution!"

"Tut--tut," said Doctor Williams, cheerfully. "We never permit a patient
to pronounce a prognosis upon his own case!"

"Friend, my horse ran away, stumbled and fell upon me, and rolled over
me in getting up. The viscera is crushed within me; breathing is
difficult; speech painful; motion agonizing; but you may examine and
satisfy yourselves," said Doctor Day, still speaking cheerfully, though
with great suffering.

His old friend