"Well, I've done what I could," said the doctor's wife, quickly, as though her husband's words bore some unspoken reproach. "I know my double duty to a neighbor and a patient of yours, John. But I can't go to see Tom Watson again. You never saw such a sad sight, Mr. Gordon. I actually dream about it after I have seen him. That is where the Watsons live," she said, pointing to the house. "I go every morning to the cross fence between our house and theirs, taking some little thing for Tom just to show that I have been thinking about him, and I call Anne to the other side of the fence and ask her how he is. But doing even that hurts her and hurts me, for she knows that I know that he never can be any better." "And I think he knows it too. That is the most terrible thing of all," the doctor said, musingly, as if turning over ways and means in his mind. Mrs. Alexander looked at Lynn with a sudden dimness shadowing the brightness of her kind eyes. "You don't know the Oldfield people, Mr. Gordon, though you are really one of us. Unless you had known Tom Watson as we knew him, you can hardly understand how terrible and how strange his present condition seems to us. He used to be a great, strong, noisy, reckless, hot-tempered dare-devil, but as tender-hearted as a child and liked by everybody, black and white, big and little, in the whole country." A sudden recollection caused her to smile at her husband, forgetting that she had just been scolding him and that he richly deserved it:-- "You remember, John, that time when Tom kept those bear cubs tied up in his back lot. One day the biggest of them got loose and caught Sidney as she was going home with a pitcher of milk which Anne had given her. Sidney was almost scared out of her wits, and screamed as loud as she could, till the bear squeezed her so tight that she couldn't make another sound. But she never let go the pitcher--never even loosed her grip--and kept on holding it out of the cub's reach, long after she couldn't scream any more. Tom went running. Can't you see him now, John? and hear him shouting at every jump: 'Let go, Sid. Good Gad--woman! are you going to let the bear hug the life out of you before you'll give him that spoonful of milk?'" "And to think of poor Tom as he is now;" she went on presently, the smile fading. "I will speak to Sidney as you suggest, John. I will send her a basket of sweet potatoes and urge her to go as often as she can. Anne would never think of asking any one to come, but I know she would be pleased to have Sidney drop in. She's always like a fresh breeze on a hot day even to well folks. She told me, however, the other morning that Tom Watson never seemed to notice anything that she had to say. She said that, no matter how hard she tried to entertain him, he kept on staring out at the empty big road, just sitting there, not trying to speak, and looking like a dead man only for his restless, burning eyes."