‘I have not lost confidence in you individually. It is the science of medicine which I disbelieve in. Here am I, after four months’ patient observance of your regimen, eating, drinking, sleeping, ay, almost thinking according to your advice, and yet I am no better at the end of it all, but feel myself growing daily worse. If all your endeavours to patch up a broken constitution have resulted only in failure, why do you not tell me so without farther parley? I told you at the beginning that I was stoic enough to receive my death-warrant without a pang.’ ‘And I tell you again, as I told you then, that I have no sentence of death to pronounce. I confess that your symptoms during the last three weeks have somewhat puzzled me. If they continue to do so, I shall ask your permission to consult a medical man of wider experience than my own.’ ‘No,’ answered the old man captiously, ‘I will see no strangers. I will be experimentalised upon by no new hand. If you can’t cure me, put me down as incurable. And now you had better go to your other patients; I have kept you later than usual. You will come back in the evening, I suppose?’ ‘Most certainly.’ ‘Very well, then, devote your evening to me, for once in a way, instead of to Lucille. You will have plenty of her society by and by, when she is your wife. I want to talk seriously with you. The time has come when there must be no more concealment between you and me. There are secrets which a man may do wisely to keep through life, but which it is fatal to carry to the grave. Give me your hand, Lucius,’ he said, stretching out his wasted fingers to meet the strong grasp of the surgeon; ‘we have not known each other long, yet as much as I can trust anybody I trust you; as much as I can love anybody—since my son turned my milk of human kindness to gall—I love you. Come back to me this evening, and I will prove to you that this is no idle protestation.’ The thin hand trembled in Lucius Davoren’s grasp. There was more emotion in these words of Homer Sivewright’s than Lucius had supposed the old man capable of feeling. ‘Whatever service you may require of me, whatever trust you may confide in me,’ said the surgeon with warmth, ‘be assured that the service shall be faithfully performed, the trust held sacred.’ And thus they parted. CHAPTER III. HOMER SIVEWRIGHT’S LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT.