But while Providence was thus reforming Father Baguss, Tappelmine was growing steadily weaker, and Baguss found his causes of discomfort increased by a debate, which lasted long in his mind, whether it might not be better, for the sake of the drunkard’s family, to let Tappelmine die, and then lease the farm himself at a price which would support the widow. While one phase of the case was present in his mind, he would suggest to the doctor that medicine didn’t seem to do any good--which was certainly true--and that he didn’t believe it would pay to come so often; when, on the contrary, conscience would argue for its own side, the old man would have all three of the physicians visit Tappelmine in rapid succession. The doctors disagreed, as any one but Father Baguss would have known. Perry suggested electrical treatment, which would necessitate the purchase of a battery, no such piece of mechanism having ever been seen in the town except in a locked cabinet of the Barton High School. Dr. White outlined a course of treatment which seemed reasonable to Father Baguss, but which, put into practice, did neither good nor harm; while Pykem arranged for certain inexpensive applications of water, with results which were in the main encouraging. But Tappelmine was unable to leave his bed for three months, and when he was at all fit to work, he could labor for but two or three hours a day. And so Father Baguss found himself brought down to the position of a man who was spending money without knowing what he was to get for it. Such a position he had never occupied before, and no one could wonder that he felt uncomfortable in it; but the duration of the period was such that the victim succumbed to the steady pressure of truths which, in their abstract form, would have been as ineffective against him as against an acute logician whose intellect had been trained by his pocket.