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unkempt and hideous old crone as black as night opened the door for him. He left in the hall his hat and overcoat and a little square box he had brought in his hand; and then he followed the ebony hag up-stairs to Colonel Manning's room. Here at the door she left him, after giving a sharp knock. A weak voice said, "Come in!" Laurence Laughton entered the room with a quick step, but the light-hearted words with which he had meant to encourage his friend died on his lips as soon as he saw how grievously that friend had changed. John Manning had faded to a shadow of his former self; the light of his eye was quenched, and the spirit within him seemed broken; the fine, sensitive, noble face lay white against the pillow, looking weary and wan and hopeless. The effort to greet his friend exhausted him and brought on a hard cough, and he pressed his hand to his breast as though some hidden malady were gnawing and burning within. "Well, John," said Larry, as he took a seat by the bedside, "why didn't you let me know before now that you were laid up? I could have got away a month ago." "Time enough yet," said John Manning slowly; "time enough yet. I shall not die for another week, I fear." "Why, man, you must not talk like that. You are as good as a dozen dead men yet," said Larry, trying to look as cheerful as might be. "I am as good as dead myself," said the sick man seriously, as befitted a man under the shadow of death; "and I have no wish to live. The sooner I am out of this pain and powerlessness the better I shall like it." "I say, John, old man, this is no way for you to talk. Brace up, and you will soon be another man!" "I shall soon be in another world, I hope," and the helpless misery of the tone in which these few words were said smote Laurence Laughton to the heart. "What's the matter with you?" he asked with as lively an air as he could attain, for the ominous and inexplicable sadness of the situation was fast taking hold on him. "I have a bullet through the lungs and a pain in the heart." "But men do not die of a bullet in the lungs and a pain in the heart," was Larry's encouraging response. "I shall." "Why should you more than others?" "Because there is something else--something mysterious, some unknown malady--which bears me down and burns me up. There is no use trying to deceive me, Larry. My papers are made out, and I shall get my discharge from the Army of the Living in a very f
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