Early in September William Douglas failed suddenly. From taciturnity he sank into silence, from quiet into lethargy. He rose in the morning, but after that effort he became like a breathing statue, and sat all day in his arm-chair without stirring or noticing anything. If they brought him food he ate it, but he did not speak or answer their questions by motion or gesture. The fort surgeon was puzzled; it was evidently not paralysis. He was a new-comer on the island, and he asked many questions as to the past. Anne sincerely, Miss Lois resolutely, denied that there had ever been any trouble with the brain; Dr. Gaston drummed on the table, and answered sharply that all men of intellect were more or less mad. But the towns-people smiled, and tapped their foreheads significantly; and the new surgeon had noticed in the course of his experience that, with time for observation, the towns-people are generally right. So he gave a few medicines, ordered a generous diet, and looking about him for some friend of the family who could be trusted, selected at last Père Michaux. For Miss Lois would not treat him even civilly, bristling when he approached like a hedge-hog; and with her frank eyes meeting his, he found it impossible to speak to Anne. But he told Père Michaux the true state of his patient, and asked him to break the tidings to the family. "He can not live long," he said. "Is it so?" said Père Michaux. "God's will be done. Poor Anne!" "An odd lot of children he has in that ramshackle old house of his," continued the surgeon. "Two sets, I should say." "Yes; the second wife was a French girl." "With Indian blood?" "Yes." "I thought so. Who is to have charge of them? The boys will take to the woods, I suppose, but that little Tita is an odd specimen. She would make quite a sensation in New York a few years later." "May she never reach there!" said the old priest, fervently. "Well, perhaps you are right. But who is to have the child?" "Her sister will take charge of her." "Miss Anne? Yes, she will do her best, of course; she is a fine, frank young Saxon. But I doubt if she understands that elfish little creature." "She understands her better than we do," said the priest, with some heat. "Ah? You know best, of course; I speak merely as an outsider," answered the new surgeon, going off about his business. [Illustration: "ALARMED, HE BENT OVER HER."]