He shrinks back in horror, his soul rises in loathing: he pants, and wildly throws himself about, with a half-smothered cry. "Oh, gently, my darling! you will hurt yourself." It is his father's voice, and he turns to him and clings tightly. "I don't care--I don't care. I want to hurt myself. I want to die. I don't want to live like that!" At the sight of the physicians, his excitement redoubled, and he clung more tightly to his father. "No! No! Send them away! They shan't look at me, they shan't touch me. They are going to try and make me well, and I don't want to get well. I _won't_ get well!" The doctors retired, as their presence excited him so much, and Sir Everard tried to loosen the boy's convulsive grasp round his neck. Humphrey was too exhausted to retain the position long: his hands relaxed their hold, and Sir Everard laid him back on the pillow. Once more the soft face in the picture exercises its old influence over him, and charms away, as of old, the fit of passionate rebellion. "Father," he entreated, in a whisper, "let me die! Promise not to let them try and make me well again." Between surprise and emotion Sir Everard could not answer. He thought the idea of death would be both strange and repugnant to so thoughtless a creature; and he marvelled to hear him speak of it. "You'll promise, won't you, father? You know I _couldn't_ live like that! Let me go and live with mother in Heaven. See," pointing to the picture, "how happy I was in her arms when I was a baby, and I want to lie there again so much! Just now, when I thought it was still the night Miles was ill, before I knew I should never walk or run any more, even then I wanted so to get ill and die, that I might go to her, and I want it more than ever now. I thought then I never could get ill, because I am so strong; but now I _am_ ill, and so you'll let me die! Promise not to try and make me well?" Three times Sir Everard strove to answer, and three times his voice failed him. He managed, however, to murmur something which sounded like an affirmative, which satisfied and quieted the child. But much of the boy's speech had been wholly unintelligible to him, and his allusions to his mother's picture especially puzzled him. Looking upon the drawing-room as a closed room, he had no idea that the children ever penetrated into it, or that they knew of the existence of the picture. And laying his hand on the child's head, he said: "How did you know that was your mother, Humphrey?" The boy shot at him a glance of such astonishment that Sir Everard felt rebuked, and did not like to continue the conversation; and the doctors, returning at that moment, it was not resumed. This time, Humphrey made no resistance, and the physicians were able to make their examination. Leaving the village doctor by the bedside, Sir Everard led the way to the library, to hear their opinion.