Two days later, Doctor Trubie, arriving at the same hotel, according to previous agreement, was met by the information that Mr. Arling was lying dangerously ill with that fever which guards, like a flaming sword, the gates of the sunny South; and the letter was put into his hands. Tearing it open, he read:-- "I charge you, by everything that is sacred, to take no further step in the business that brings you here, until I recover, and we can consult together; and, if I die, I charge you, as you would have me rest quietly in my grave, to take none at all. BERGAN." Doctor Trubie flung down the letter with a most disgusted face. "To think that Roath should escape me thus!" he exclaimed, discontentedly. "That is, to be sure, if Bergan does not recover. He _shall_ recover!" Upstairs he sprang, two steps at a time. But, once in Bergan's chamber, his heart failed him. The patient lay in a stupor that seemed very near of kin to death. Two physicians stood by the bed, and the first words that met his ear were,--"No hope." PART FOURTH. A NEW FIELD. I. ALIVE IN FAMINE. Rarely does a man go down to the verge of the grave, and look into its profound and pregnant depths, without carrying from henceforth traces of the journey. His views of life will be truer, if not sadder, forever afterward. The laws of moral perspective, though they do not change, will be better understood; so that objects at a distance are no longer dwarfed to the understanding, however they may appear to the eye. Character becomes the central "point of sight," toward which duty continually draws converging right lines, by the aid of which happiness, fame, and wealth, fall into their proper places, and assume their true proportions. Bergan Arling was seated in his office at Savalla. At first sight, it might seem that he was little changed, but a closer inspection would have awakened some surprise that the lapse of little more than a year could have changed him so much. The youthfulness had gone out of his face,--that half-eager, half-wistful look which says so plainly, "The world is all before me, where to choose;"--it was now the face of a man among men, who had found his place and his work, who had grappled with many hard problems, and solved some, who was accustomed to deal with serious subjects in a serious way, and who had withal, a definite rule and object of life. In short, it was informed with a positive and noble individuality, born out of suffering, and not yet wholly oblivious of the pangs that had given it birth, but certain, in good time, to attain to the fulness of an inward joy, which, having a deep wellspring of its own, would be little dependent upon the ebb and flow of outward circumstance.