It was Mary, who said, in her sweetest and most natural tones, "Miss Prissy, the Doctor would like to see you." Mary was much astonished at the frightened, discomposed manner with which Miss Prissy received this announcement, and said,-- "I'm afraid I've waked you up out of sleep, I don't think there's the least hurry." Miss Prissy didn't, either; but she reflected afterwards that she might as well get through with it at once; and therefore, smoothing her tumbled cap-border, she went to the Doctor's study. This time he was quite composed, and received her with a mournful gravity, and requested her to be seated. "I beg, Madam," he said, "you will excuse the abruptness of my manner in our late interview. I was so little prepared for the communication you had to make, that I was, perhaps, unsuitably discomposed. Will you allow me to ask whether you were requested by any of the parties to communicate to me what you did?" "No, Sir," said Miss Prissy. "Have any of the parties ever communicated with you on the subject at all?" said the Doctor. "No, Sir," said Miss Prissy. "That is all," said the Doctor. "I will not detain you. I am very much obliged to you, Madam." He rose, and opened the door for her to pass out, and Miss Prissy, overawed by the stately gravity of his manner, went out in silence. CHAPTER XL. THE SACRIFICE. When Miss Prissy left the room, the Doctor sat down by the table and covered his face with his hands. He had a large, passionate, determined nature; and he had just come to one of those cruel crises in life in which it is apt to seem to us that the whole force of our being, all that we can hope, wish, feel, enjoy, has been suffered to gather itself into one great wave, only to break upon some cold rock of inevitable fate, and go back, moaning, into emptiness. In such hours men and women have cursed God and life, and thrown violently down and trampled under their feet what yet was left of life's blessings, in the fierce bitterness of despair. "This, or nothing!" the soul shrieks, in her frenzy. At just such points as these, men have plunged into intemperance and wild excess,--they have gone to be shot down in battle,--they have broken life, and thrown it away, like an empty goblet, and gone, like wailing ghosts, out into the dread unknown. The possibility of all this lay in that heart which had just received that stunning blow. Exercised and disciplined as he had been, by years of sacrifice, by constant, unsleeping self-vigilance, there was rising there, in that great heart, an ocean-tempest of passion, and for a while his cries unto God seemed as empty and as vague as the screams of birds tossed and buffeted in the clouds of mighty tempests.