No; he had no appetite; she was not to trouble about him. And then he tried to get up; but that gave him such a pain in his loins he was fain to lie down again. So then he felt that he had got rheumatic fever. He told her so; but, seeing her sweet anxious face, begged her not to be alarmed--he knew what to take for it. Would she be kind enough to go to his arsenal and fetch some specimens of bark she would find there, and also the keg of rum? She flew at the word, and soon made him an infusion of the barks in boiling water; to which the rum was added. His sweet nurse administered this from time to time. The barks used were of the cassia tree, and a wild citron tree. Cinchona did not exist in this island, unfortunately. Perhaps there was no soil for it at a sufficient elevation above the sea. Nevertheless with these inferior barks they held the fever in check. But the pain was obstinate, and cost Helen many a sigh; for, if she came softly, she could often hear him moan; and, the moment he heard her foot, he set to and whistled, for a blind; with what success may be imagined. She would have bought those pains, or a portion of them; ay, and paid a heavy price for them. But pain, like everything, intermits, and in those blessed intervals his mind was more active than ever, and ran a great deal upon what he called the Problem. But she, who had set it him, gave him little encouragement now to puzzle over it. The following may serve as a specimen of their conversation on that head. "The air of this island," said he, "gives one a sort of vague sense of mental power. It leads to no result in my case. Still, it is an agreeable sensation to have it floating across my mind that some day I shall solve the Great Problem. Ah! if I was only an inventor!" "And so you are." "No, no," said Hazel, disclaiming as earnestly as some people claim; "I do things that look like acts of invention, but they are acts of memory. I could show you plates and engravings of all the things I have seemed to invent. A man who studies books instead of skimming them can cut a dash in a desert island, until the fatal word goes forth--invent; and then you find him out." "I am sure I wish I had never said the fatal word. You will never get well if you puzzle your brain over impossibilities."