Leonard was alone, but was not, as before, sitting unemployed; he carefully laid down his etching work ere he came forward to meet his friend; and there was not the bowed and broken look about him, but a fixed calmness and resolution, as he claimed the fatherly embrace and blessing with which the Doctor now always met him. 'I bring you no certainty, Leonard. It is under consideration.' 'Thank you. You have done everything,' returned Leonard, quietly; 'and--' then pausing, he added, 'I know the day now--the day after my birthday.' 'Let us--let us hope,' said the Doctor, greatly agitated. 'Thank you,' again said Leonard; and there was a pause, during which Dr. May anxiously studied the face, which had become as pale and almost as thin as when the lad had been sent off to Coombe, and infinitely older in the calm steadfastness of every feature. 'You do not look well, Leonard.' 'No; I am not quite well; but it matters very little,' he said, with a smile. 'I am well enough to make it hard to believe how soon all sense and motion will be gone out of these fingers!' and he held up his hand, and studied the minutiae of its movements with a strange grave sort of curiosity. 'Don't--don't, Leonard!' exclaimed the Doctor. 'You may be able to bear it, but I cannot.' 'I thought you would not mind, you have so often watched death.' 'Yes; but--' and he covered his face with his hands. 'I wish it did not pain you all so much,' said Leonard, quietly. 'But for that, I can feel it to be better than if I had gone in the fever, when I had no sense to think or repent; or if I had--I hardly knew my own faults.' 'You seem much happier now, my boy.' 'Yes,' said Leonard. 'I am more used to the notion, and Mr. Wilmot has been so kind. Then I am to see Ave to-morrow, if she is well enough. Henry has promised to bring her, and leave her alone with me; and I do hope--that I shall be able to convince her that it is not so very bad for me--and then she may be able to take comfort. You know she would, if she were nursing me now in my bed at Bankside; so why should she not when she sees that I don't think this any worse, but rather better?' The Doctor was in no mood to think any comfort possible in thus losing one like Leonard, and he did not commit himself to an untruth. There was a silence again, and Leonard opened his book, and took out his etchings, one which he had already promised the Doctor, another for Aubrey, and at the third the Doctor exclaimed inarticulately with surprise and admiration.