Thoughts like these came to me so quietly and so naturally, now, that I wondered why I had not been familiar with them before; it even occurred to me that being very busy did not wholly excuse a live man for not thinking; and it was something in the softened spirit of this strange humility that I opened the noiseless door, and found myself among my old patients in the large ward. Never before had I entered that sad place that the electric thrill of welcome, which only a physician knows, had not pulsated through it, preceding me, from end to end of the long room. The peculiar _lighting_ of the ward that flashes with the presence of a favourite doctor; the sudden flexible smile on pain-pinched lips; the yearning motion of the eyes in some helpless body where only the eyes can stir; the swift stretching-out of wasted hands; the half-inaudible cry of welcome: "The doctor's come!" "Oh, there's the doctor!" "Why, it's the _doctor_!"--the loving murmur of my name; the low prayer of blessing on it,--oh, never before had I entered my hospital, and missed the least of these. I thought I was prepared for this, but it was not without a shock that I stood among my old patients, mute and miserable, glancing piteously at them, as they had so often done at me; seeking for their recognition, which I might not have; longing for their welcome, which was not any more for me. The moans of pain, the querulous replies to nurses, the weary cough or plethoric breathing, the feeble convalescent laughter,--these greeted me; and only these. Like the light that entered at the window, or the air that circulated through the ward, I passed unnoticed and unthanked. Some one called out petulantly that a door had got unfastened, and bade a nurse go shut it, for it blew on her. But when I came up to the bedside of this poor woman, I saw that she was crying. "She's cried herself half-dead," a nurse said, complainingly. "Nobody can stop her. She's taking on so for Dr. Thorne." "I don't blame her," said a little patient from a wheeled-chair. "Everybody knows what he did for her. She's got one of her attacks,--and look at her! There can't anybody but him stop it. Whatever we're going to do without the doctor"-- Her own lip quivered, though she was getting well. "I don't see how the doctor _could_ die!" moaned the very sick woman, weeping afresh, "when there's those that nobody but him can keep alive. It hadn't oughter to be let to be. How are sick folks going to get along without their doctor? It ain't _right_!" "Lord have mercy on ye, poor creetur," said an old lady from the opposite cot. "Don't take on so. It don't _help_ it any. It ain't agoing to bring the doctor back!"