to do likewise, but lacking a pocket handkerchief abandons that outlet for his emotion. Pleasant sheds tears deserving her own name, and her sweet delusion is at its height.

There is intelligence in his eyes. He wants to ask a question. He wonders where he is. Tell him.

“Father, you were run down on the river, and are at Miss Abbey Potterson’s.”

He stares at his daughter, stares all around him, closes his eyes, and lies slumbering on her arm.

The short-lived delusion begins to fade. The low, bad, unimpressible face is coming up from the depths of the river, or what other depths, to the surface again. As he grows warm, the doctor and the four men cool. As his lineaments soften with life, their faces and their hearts harden to him.

“He will do now,” says the doctor, washing his hands, and looking at the patient with growing disfavour.

“Many a better man,” moralizes Tom Tootle with a gloomy shake of the head, “ain’t had his luck.”

“It’s to be hoped he’ll make a better use of his life,” says Bob Glamour, “than I expect he will.”

“Or than he done afore,” adds William Williams.

“But no, not he!” says Jonathan of the no surname, clinching the quartette.

They speak in a low tone because of his daughter, but she sees that they have all drawn off, and that they stand in a group at the other end of the room, shunning him. It would be too much to suspect them of being sorry that he didn’t die when he had done so much towards it, but they clearly wish that they had had a better subject to bestow their pains on. Intelligence is conveyed to Miss Abbey in the bar, who reappears on the scene, and contemplates from a distance, holding whispered discourse with the doctor. The spark of life was deeply interesting while it was in abeyance, but now that it has got established in Mr. Riderhood, there appears to be a general desire that circumstances had admitted of its being developed in anybody else, rather than that gentleman.

“However,” says Miss Abbey, cheering them up, “you have done your duty like good and true men, and you had better come down and take something at the expense of the Porters.”

This they all do, leaving the daughter watching the father. To whom, in their absence, Bob Gliddery presents himself.

“His gills looks rum; don’t they?” says Bob, after inspecting the patient.

Pleasant faintly nods.

“His gills ’ll look rummer when he wakes; won’t they?” says Bob.

Pleasant hopes not. Why?

“When he finds himself here, you know,” Bob explains. “Cause Miss Abbey forbid him the house and ordered him out of it. But what you may call the Fates ordered him into it again. Which is rumness; ain’t it?”

“He wouldn’t have come here of his own accord,” returns poor Pleasant, with an effort at a little pride.

“No,” retorts Bob. “Nor he wouldn’t have been let in, if he had.”

The short delusion is quite dispelled now. As plainly as she sees on her arm the old father, unimproved, Pleasant sees that everybody there will cut him when he recovers consciousness. “I’ll take him away ever so soon as I can,” thinks Pleasant with a sigh; “he’s best at home.”