ghts?
But is it not true, how the _Bon Dieu_ punishes the wicked? For
myself, I was in terror--even though I was some distance away; and
although that young gentleman, Monsieur Hector, was so good as to
hold my hand."

CHAPTER XXI

THE PAYMENT

Doctor Jamieson did not at once return to his other duties. He
knew that in this case care and skill would for a time continue in
demand. Little sleep was accorded him during his first night.
Ammonia--whisky--what he had, he used to keep his patient alive;
but morning came, and Dunwody still was living. Morphine now
seemed proper to the backwoods physician; after this had done its
work, so that his patient slept, he left the room and wandered
discontentedly about in the great house, too tired to wake, too
strained to sleep.

"Old--old--it's an old, tumble-down ruin, that's what it is," he
grumbled. "Everything in sixes and sevens--a man like that--and an
ending like this to it all."

He had called several times before he could get any attendance from
the shiftless blacks. These, quick to catch any slackening in the
reins of the governing power which controlled their lives, dropped
back into unreadiness and pretense more and more each hour.

"What it needs here is a woman," grumbled Jamieson to himself.
"All the time, for that matter. But this one's got to stay now, I
don't care who she is. There must be some one here to run things
for a month or two. Besides, she's got his life in her two hands,
some way. If she left now, might as well shoot him at once. Oh,
hell! when I die, I want to go to a womanless world. No I don't,
either!"

His decision he at last announced to Josephine herself when finally
the latter appeared to make inquiry regarding the sick master of
Tallwoods.

"My dear girl," said he, "I am a blunt man, not a very good doctor
maybe, and perhaps not much of a gentleman, I don't know--never
stopped to ask myself about it. But now, anyhow, I don't know how
you happened to be here, or who you are, or when you are going
away, and I'm not going to ask you about any of those things. What
I want to say is this: Mr. Dunwody is going to be a very sick man.
He hasn't got any sort of proper care here, there's no one to run
this place, and I can't stay here all the time myself. Even if I
did stay, all I could do would be to give him a dose of quinine or
calomel once in a while, and that isn't what he needs. He needs
some one to be around and w