"That is a great deal more than I can say, sir. The thought of it is troubling my brain quite as much as work ever did. It is never out of it, night or day." For once in his screwy life, old Brown was generous. He told Mr. Marks to draw his salary up to the day he had left, and he added ten pounds to it over and above. * * * * * During that visit I paid to Miss Deveen's in London, when Tod was with the Whitneys, and Helen made her first curtsey to the Queen, and we discovered the ill-doings of that syren, Mademoiselle Sophie Chalk, I saw Marks. Mrs. Todhetley had given me two or three commissions, as may be remembered: one amongst them was to call in Pimlico, and see how Marks was getting on. Accordingly I went. We had heard nothing, you must understand, of what I have told above, and did not know but he was still in his situation. It was a showery day in April: just a twelvemonth, by the way, since his visit to us at Dyke Manor. I found the house out readily; it was near Ebury Street; and I knocked. A young lad opened the door, and asked me to walk into the parlour. "You are Mr. Marks's son," I said, rubbing my feet on the mat: "I can tell by the likeness. What's your name?" "William. Papa's is James." "Yes, I know." "He is ill," whispered the lad, with his hand on the door handle. "Mamma's downstairs, making him some arrowroot." Well, I think you might have knocked me down with a feather when I knew him--for at first I did not. He was sitting in an easy-chair by the fire, dressed, but wrapped round with blankets: and instead of being the James Marks we had known, he was like a living skeleton, with cheek-bones and hollow eyes. But he was glad to see me, smiled, and held out his hand from the blanket. It is uncommonly awkward for a young fellow to be taken unawares like this. You don't know what to say. I'm sure I as much thought he was dying as I ever thought anything in this world. At last I managed to stammer a word or two about being sorry to see him so ill. "Ay," said he, in a weak, panting voice, "I am different from what I was when with your kind people, Johnny. The trouble I foresaw then has come." "You used sometimes to feel then as though you would not long keep up," was my answer, for really I could find nothing else to say. He nodded. "Yes, I felt that I was breaking down--that I should inevitably break down unless I could have rest. I went on until February, Johnny, and then it came. I had to give up my situation; and since then I have been dangerously ill from another source--chest and lungs." "I did not know your lungs were weak, Mr. Marks."