Oh, how could he go on living--that old man for whom nobody cared; who did nothing but keep the younger ones out of their own! What had he to live for? Patty wondered, with a wild, yet suppressed rage which no words could express; old, helpless, not able to enjoy anything except that wretched, tedious backgammon, and keeping others out of their own; yet he would live and see Gervase die! He would go on, and on, and see his only child buried, as he had seen his wife, and forget all about it after a week, and play his backgammon, and be guarded by Dunning from every wind that blew. Dunning! Was it Dunning, perhaps, that kept him alive; that knew things which the doctors don’t know? It was natural to Patty’s education and training to think this, and that some private nostrum would do more than all the drugs in the world. “Shall I send down a nurse to you for a moment,” she said to Sir Giles suddenly, “and will you let Dunning come up and look at him?” Dunning could not refuse to go, but he looked at Patty suspiciously, as if she meant to betray him into some trap. “I don’t know nothing about that kind of illness,” he said. “Oh, but you don’t know what kind of illness it is till you see him,” cried Patty. She hastily led the man to her husband’s bedside, and watched his looks while he stood awkwardly, holding as far aloof as he could, looking down upon the half-sleep, half-stupor, in which the patient lay. “Oh, Dunning, what do you think?” “I think as he looks very bad,” Dunning said, in a subdued and troubled voice. “That’s not what I want you to tell me. I want you to think if there is anything we could give him to rouse him up. What he wants is to be roused up, don’t you see? When you are roused to see the need of it, you can do a deal for yourself, however ill you may be. What could we give him, Dunning, to rouse him up?” Dunning could see nothing but some unintelligible trap that was being laid for him in those words. “I’m not a doctor,” he said, sullenly. “I know what’s good for Sir Giles, as is chronic; but I don’t know anything about the like of this. I should say there’s nothing to give him, but just wait and--trust in God,” said Dunning. “Oh, God!” said Patty, in the unintentional profanity of her hot terror and distress. He was so far off; so difficult to get at; so impossible to tell what His meaning was! whereas she had felt that this man might have known something--some charm, some medicine which could be given at once.