The hours spent with him did not refresh or invigorate me as the woods and music did; I re-entered the swing doors of my prison--as I came to regard the Hub--with no new stimulus. His example impressed me, but his atmosphere and outlook both depressed. Only my admiration for his courage, strong will, and consistent attitude remained, while I drank “tea” with my unpleasant customers, or listened to complaints from the staff. Before the swing-doors closed for the last time, however, the thin, keen-faced doctor with the hectic flush and the bright burning eyes had succumbed to his terrible malady. His end made a great impression on me. For several months he went about like a living skeleton. His cough was ghastly. He had less and less money, and I seemed to be the only friend he turned to, or indeed possessed at all, for I was the only person he allowed to help him, and the little help I could give was barely enough to prevent the landlady turning him out for rent and board unpaid. To the last his will burned in him like a flame. He talked and studied, and dreamed his long dream of scientific achievement even when he knew his time was measured by weeks, and he was utterly scornful of death and a Deity that could devise such a poor scheme of existence, so full of failure, pain, and abortive effort. But I was full of admiration for the way he kept going full speed to the very end, starting new books and fresh experiments even when he knew he would not have time to get half-way through with them, and discussing high schemes just as though he expected years in which to carry them out--instead of days. Here was a man absolutely without faith, or any belief in God or future life, who walked straight up to a miserable death under full steam, with nothing to console or buoy him up, and without friends to sympathize, and who never for a single instant flinched or whimpered. There burned in his heart the fire of a really strong will. It was the first time I had realized at close quarters what this meant, and when I went to his funeral I felt full of real sorrow, and have never forgotten the scene at his death-bed when the keen set face relaxed nothing of its decision to the very last. CHAPTER IX At length the bitter, sparkling winter was over, the sleigh-bells silent, the covered skating-rinks all closed. The last remnants of the piled-up snow had melted, and the sweet spring winds were blowing freshly down the cedar-paved streets. On the lake shores the boat-houses were being opened; canoes, skiffs and cat-boats being repainted. Tents and camping kit were being overhauled. The talk everywhere was of picnics, expeditions, trips into the backwoods, and plans for summer holidays. Crystal sunlight flooded the world. The Canadian spring intoxicated the brain and sent the blood dancing to wild, happy measures.