My escape from that strong net of fatality that had enmeshed so many years of my still young life, had been, it seemed, only a merciful respite. Now the toils, regathering about me again, woke a spirit of hopeless resignation in me that had been foreign to my earlier mood of resistance. Man has made of himself so plodding an animal as to almost resent the unreality of his brief vacations. He eats his way, like a wood-boring larva, through a monotonous tunnel of routine, satisfied with the thought that some day he may emerge into the light on the other side, ready-winged for flight to the garden of paradise. Perhaps Lazarus was humanly far-seeing in refusing the rich man a drop of water. It would have made the poor wretch’s after lot tenfold more unendurable. Now a feeling came over me that I could struggle no more, but would lie in the web and suffer unresisting the onsets of fate. My father’s seizure; Duke’s reappearance and his hint as to the visit I was to expect from Jason; the sudden flight of the cripple before the vision of Dr. Crackenthorpe--all these were strands about my soul with which I would concern myself no longer. I would do my duty, so far as I could, and set my face in one direction and glance aside no more. That night I ordered Peggy to bed--for since Jason’s going she slept in the house--and myself passed the dreary vigil of the hours by my father’s side. Indeed, for the three days following I scarcely lay down at all, but took my food in snatches and slept by fits and starts in chairs or window-corners as occasion offered. During the whole of this time the condition of the patient never altered. He lay on his back, breathing crookedly from his twisted mouth; his eyes closed; the whole of the right side of his body stricken motionless. His left hand he would occasionally move and that was the single sign of animate life he showed. And day and night the wind blew and the hail and rain came down in a cold and ceaseless deluge. The whole country was flooded, I heard, and the streams risen, but still the rending storm flew and added devastation to misery. It was on the afternoon of the third day that, chancing to look at the old man as I sat by his bedside, I saw, with a certain shock of pleasure, that his eyes were open and fixed upon my face. I jumped to my feet and leaned over him, and at that some shadow of emotion passed across his features, as if the angel of death stood between him and the window.