True it was in the convalescent's case, that while Johanna's mere doings had their curative value, her simple presence had more. Yet her greatest healing was in her words; in what she told him. She only answered questions; but these he lightly plied on any and every trivial matter that promised to lead up--or around--to one subject which seemed to allure him without cessation. Yet always at her first pause after entering upon any phase of this topic, he would say, "But that's not what--hem!--I was speaking of," and starting once more, at any distance away, would begin to steal yet another approach toward the same enticing theme. So the brief time of her appointed service came to its end, neither the Doctor, nor the convalescent, nor even her young mistress, for one moment imagining what dear delight, yet withal what saintly martyrdom to Johanna, this three days' task had been. In its last hour, when she, to end all well, prepared and brought up the captive's evening meal, she found him sitting up in bed talking to Henry Fair. "Doctor thinks I can go down to my office Monday. Yes, I knew what ailed me better than he did. I began to recover the moment I quit trying to convince the Lord that He ought to run this world in my private interest. Ah! Johanna, so this is the last, is it? I'm pow'ful sorry! Mr. Fair, you remember Johanna, don't you?" Mr. Fair remembered, the maid courtesied, and March, a trifle unduly animated, ran on--"Johanna's the salt of the earth, Mr. Fair. Don't often see best salt that color, do you?" Then dropping his tone--"O! you know, if my chief concern were still, as it was at first, to recover my fortunes, or even to vindicate my abilities, I reckon I could make out to accept defeat--almost. For, really, I'm just about the only sufferer--outwardly, at least. Of course, there's an awful shrinkage here, but all our home people have made net gains--unless it is Proudfit; I--eh--Johanna, you needn't stay in here; only don't go beyond call." The maid closed the door after her, took her accustomed rocking-chair and needle on the stair-landing, and being quite as human as if she had been white, listened. Fair's words were very indistinct, but March's came through the thin door-panels as clean as rifle-balls. "O! yes," was one of his replies, "I know that with even nothing left but the experiences, I'm a whole world richer, in things that make a real manhood and life, than when I was land-poor with my hundred thousand acres. As far as _I_ am concerned, I can afford to deny myself all the reprisals, and revenges too, that litigations could ever give me. I've got sixty acres of Widewood to begin over with--By Jo'! Garnet, himself, began with less!" He let go a feverish laugh.