“If the Bonnie Lassie has been giving you lessons, you're in a good school,” I said, for the local sculptress, nymph, and goddess of Our Square had already begun to make us and herself famous with her tiny bronzes. “Not lessons exactly. But pointers.” “You're in luck to be making money while you 're laid up.” “The doc says I oughtn't to work at it. But I had to do something or go crazy. A man can't live by just waiting; can he? So when I can't sleep I sketch. And the checks come in. It's like a miracle. Only--it isn't the miracle that I want. When do you think I'll be strong enough to get out? Can't you tell me? Can't you find out from doc? I'd get better if I only had something to go on!” Always that was the beginning and end of our talks; talks which often skirted the borders of the secret that was wearing his life down, but never revealed it. When I sought to shift the burden of the query upon the Little Red Doctor, he looked glum and shook his head. “But go there when you can, dominie. He likes to have you. You rest him. Sometimes he sleeps after you've gone.” Though the Gnome never spoke of it again, I knew why he liked me with him. The bond of sympathy was that in my life, too, had been an empty chair that whispered. So the harsh summer elongated itself like the stretching of a white-hot metal bar, and through the swelter and hush of long nights I watched the rugged Gnome slowly dwindle. My first weekly watch night in September came with one of the savagest onslaughts of belated heat in the memory of Our Square. For the sake of what little air there was I had drawn the couch out between the two windows. Discouraged by the handicap of a forearm which stuck clammily to his drawing board, the Gnome had turned off his overhead light, and now lay rigid. But I knew that he did not sleep. From some merciful cleft in the brazen sky came a waft of coolness. It fanned me into a doze. I awoke with a start, to hear the Gnome's voice, in a hard-breathed whisper: “My heart! Oh, my heart!” “This,” I thought, “is the end.” I tried to rise, but a paralysis of the will held me, though my senses seemed preternaturally acute. From the bedside I heard the stir of the wicker chair. The withes moved softly upon themselves with delicate, smooth rustlings. The chair, whispering, sagged and yielded as if to the pressure of some light, sweet burden. Then the voice of the Gnome came, out of the darkness, again, and I knew that my fear was without cause, for he was leaning toward the chair and speaking to that which whispered. “My Heart! Oh, my Heart! Will you never come back? Don't you know that I can't come to find you? I've tried. God of pity, how I've tried! Can't you hear me, can't you feel me calling for you? If I could see you once again! Only once. It isn't so much to ask. And the time is short. Come back to me, my Heart!”