Bassett considered; had his private conviction (that there was a woman in it) on the tip of his tongue; but ultimately shook his shrewd, cool head. There was nothing to be gained by speaking out; a dying man’s gratitude was nothing; and there might be something to be lost. At any rate the safe side was the wise side with that bill not even properly drawn up. So Tom and his solicitor parted coldly for the last time; and Tom tore up that slip of writing which had been handed to him at Marylebone, but relented next moment, and treasured the torn pieces till the end.
And now at last his gallant spirit surrendered itself to the apathy of sheer despair; and the physical collapse which supervened was almost as complete as that of the brave but broken heart. A sudden outbreak of morbid appearances brought the surgeon in hot haste to clean the foul tongue, to regulate the irregular pulse, moisten the parched skin, and in a word, to keep his man well enough to die on the following Tuesday. The good Macmurdo would as lief have given him a draught of deadly poison, but such humanity would have sent himself to the gallows instead. So the surgeon did his best for the poor doomed body; and the chaplain did his best for an immortal soul still filled with bitter rebellion and rage; but this physician was less successful, though not less kind—praying in his chamber for the poor impenitent, but yet doing what in him lay to further such efforts as were still being made for a reprieve. Even on the last Sunday, when the stern divine furnished that incredible barbarism, the condemned sermon, the humane gentleman was upon the other tack, and in almost hourly communication with Daintree himself.
Tom could not guess at that. The last to enter, the
