The little chap slid down, giving me his doll to nurse, and went pattering across the carpet, standing on tiptoe to open the door. The Squire said he should like to go in and see Blair. Mary went on first to warn him of our advent. My goodness! _That_ Pyefinch Blair, who used to flourish his cane, and cock it over us boys at Frost's! I should never have known him for the same. He lay in bed, too weak to raise his head from the pillow, the white skin drawn tightly over his hollow features; the cheeks slightly flushing as he watched us coming. And again I thought of Lease; for the same look was on this face that had been on his when he was dying. "Lord bless us!" cried the Squire, in what would have been a solemn tone but for surprise. And Mr. Blair began faintly to offer a kind of apology for his illness, hoping he should soon get over it now. It was nothing but the awful look, putting one unpleasantly in mind of death, that kept the Squire from breaking out with a storm of abuse all round. Why could they not have sent word to Dyke Manor, he wanted to know. As to asking particulars about _Jerry's Gazette_, which the Squire's tongue was burning to do, Blair was too far gone for it. While we stood there the doctor came in; a little man in spectacles, a friend of Mr. Lockett's. He told Blair he was getting on all right, spoke to Mrs. Blair, and took his departure. The Squire, wishing good night in a hurry, went out after the doctor, and collared him as he was walking up the street. "Won't he get over it?" "Well, sir, I am afraid not. His state of weakness is alarming." The Squire turned on him with a storm, just as though he had known him for years: asking why on earth Blair's friends (meaning himself) had not been written to, and promising a prosecution if he let him die. The doctor took it sensibly, and was cool as iced water. "We medical men are only gifted at best with human skill, sir," he said, looking the Squire full in the face. "Blair is young--not much turned thirty." "The young die as well as the old, when it pleases Heaven to take them." "But it doesn't please Heaven to take _him_," retorted the Squire, worked up to the point when he was not accountable for his words. "But that you seem in earnest, young man, probably meaning no irreverence, I'd ask you how you dare bring Heaven's name into such a case as this? Did Heaven fling him out of house and home into _Jerry's Gazette_, do you suppose? Or did man? Man, sir: selfish, hard, unjust man. Don't talk to me, Mr. Doctor, about Heaven." "All I wished to imply, sir, was, that Mr. Blair's life is not in my keeping, or in that of any human hands," said the doctor, when he had listened quietly to the end. "I will do my best to bring him round; I can do no more." "You must bring him round."