A short silence followed, which was presently broken by the scratching of a pen. The patient was writing his name, but how slowly! He seemed to be minutes in doing it. Suddenly he fell back, a smile of perfect peace lighting up his shrunken features. “Lucy’s future is assured,” he murmured, and lost or seemed to lose all connection with the scene in which he had just played such an important part. A deep sigh answered him. Whose? It had the sound of relief in it, a great soul-satisfying relief. Had the stranger uttered it? It would seem so, but his manner was too professional to be the cloak of so much emotion, or so it seemed to all eyes but one. The witnesses’ signatures were soon in place, and the stranger rose to go. As he did so his eyes flashed suddenly over his shoulder and rested for an instant on the man who occupied the neighboring cot. The movement was so quick that No. Thirteen had scarcely time to close his eyes undetected. Indeed, some glint of the half-hidden eyeball must have met the stranger’s eye, for he turned quickly and bent over the seemingly unconscious man with a gaze of such intentness that it took all the strength of what had once been called a most obstinate will for the man thus surveyed not to respond to it. Suddenly the stranger thrust his hand out and laid it on the unknown sufferer’s heart, and a slight smile crossed his features. “Is there anything I can do for you?” were the words he dropped, cold and stinging, into the apparently deaf ear. But the man’s will was indomitable and an icy silence was the sole answer which the intruder received. “I have still a thousand to give away,” was whispered so close into his face that he felt the hot breath that conveyed it. But even these words fell, or seemed to fall, upon ears of stony deafness, and the stranger rising, moved quietly away, saying as he did so, “This case here is on the mend. His heart has a very normal beat.” Some few more words were said, and he and his companion were left alone again with the nurse. At three o’clock No. Twelve called feebly for some water; as the nurse returned from giving it to him she felt her dress pulled slightly by a feeble hand. Turning to No. Thirteen she was astonished to see that his eyes were burning with quite an eager light. “I could drink some broth,” said he. “Why, you are better!” she cried. But he shook his head. “No,” said he, “but—” The voice trailed off into a feeble murmur, but the eye continued bright. He was afraid to speak for fear his lips would frame aloud the words that he had been repeating to himself for the last two hours. “Mary Earle! Mary Earle, of Hamilton, —— county, Massachusetts.” He had found the interest which had been lacking to his recovery. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PART II. THE MAN WITH THE DOG. -------