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Show I if I'll Committed to 15jc Deep. M By A. St. John Adcock. If! I I I . ' Tne steward knocked, and put his head In at I I i ;' the door. I I : i jj "Cabin passenger, sir, No. 16," he .reported, I I i with a business-like brevity. "Very bad." I I j Doctor Yalden glanced up from his desk irri- & I j tably. j "What's the matter with him?" I I 1 r ! "Dun'no, sir. Uncommon bad." I 11 jj ! "Usual thin'g, I suppose?" I i ' i j "No, sir. Not seasick. Queer when he come I LI ' ji aboard-yesterday, L thought. Been in bed all I f! day. Wouldn't let me get him anything till just I 1 j now he asked me to fetch you." I if i ' "No. 16, you say? All right." I j The steward withdrew, and the doctor only de- I j I layed to finish the first paragraph of a letter he j i ( had been writing when he was interrupted. I fl ' N It was not precisely an urgent letter, for he I km had no intention of doing anything with It until H II the ship arrived at Liverpool; but it was a let- H i ter that required a deal of consideration, and, H 1 1 though he was in most things phlegmatic, he was H pi ! impatient to have it all ready to post immediatee- I i ly he landed, for it was to contain much that he H m knew he could not possibly put into speech, H 11 and it was to tell the recipient that he would ar- H fl rive less than half a day behind it. H M Few of the passengers were in bed yet, for H m the night was young; the sea was quiet and the H JE outer air pleasantly warm, and through the Vhyth- H H mio throbbing of the engine he could hear chatter- H jjj ing and laughter and footsteps pacing overhead H If t as he made his way between decks to his patient. H ji f The lamp that shone from the wall of No. 16 H vR I showed him a haggard man stretched on the bunk H am i apparently asleep. H M ( P He was a youngish man not much over thirty, H WK anyway. His features wem gaunt and tanned B H l with hard living and rough -weather, and his m m hands were coarsened as with manual employ- M fl ments. He slept uneasily, and his breauflng was j 1 stertorious and difficult. m j While the doctor was taking his preliminary m " j t survey of him he coughed and awoke. H; j "Steward!" f , "I'm the doctor. You sent for me What's B j j wrong?" B I "Oh, thanks. . . . I don't know, doctor. I've B j , felt awfully knocked up for days past, and thought f I. could throw it off but I can't. My head's all I afire, and my hands, too. Feel, that." - K r The doctor took his hand and laid a finger on K r j his pulse. The hand was hot and dry, the pulse K was galloping furiously and a brief examination K 1- was sufficient 'to diagnose his ailment. Rf "A touch of pneumonia," said Yalden. "You BlJ must take more care of yourself than you've been Vj doing lately. You were not fit to travel; you i must have felt ill before you started." Bj "I wanted to get home," the other answered, Kj i wearily, "I've been away a long time." Kj "We must see what we can arrange about i ' nursing," ,t,he doctor concluded. "I'll give you some medicine; you've got a good constitution, and, with care, you'll pull arpund all right." "Think so?" "Oh, yes. ... He musn't be left, Barrow." The doctor turned to the steward. "Somebody will have to sit up with him tonight. I'll see him again before I turn in; and I'll get the captain to let you have assistance." After fulfilling which latter duty he retired to his cabin 'and resumed the laborious composition composi-tion of his letter. A glimpse of wha,t he was writing would have amazed any man who knew him, for to everybody every-body who knew him, with one possible exception, Dr. Yalden as a matter of fact, was rather unsympathetic, unsympa-thetic, wholly unromantic man, of nearer fifty than forty f whereas the letter that was slowly developing under his pen might almost have been written by a sentimental youngster in the rapturous rap-turous agonies of first love. Nobody would have credited the doctor with possessing the smallest streak of s'entiment anywhere in his robust, substantial sub-stantial person. He never suspected it himself even until three years ago. Three years ago he met in London the girl he told himself he had been looking for all his life. She was nearly twenty years his junior, but what did that matter? Her people had been rich and proud, and now, through recent financial disasters, they were poor and prouder, but what did all that matter either? He loved her, and cared for nothing noth-ing else if she could only love him. He had been impelled to tell her so; for his ingrained in-grained hardness and self-restraint had failed him at the first touch of this bewildering passion that, so long a-coming. subdued him utterly at last She heard him with pity in her eyes, but not love': and she told him, with only pity in her tones, that the man she loved was dead and her heart was buried with him. Later he learned the story that 'lay behind her i words, and saw more hope in it for himself than she had 'given him, for surely his living love of her could in due time, win her away from the memory of a dead rival. Beginning to flatter himself him-self that she was already relenting toward him, he had appealed to her again before he last left home, and she had seemed to waver2 she silenced him tremulously, and had seemed to hesitate; and feeling that each new day put a barrier between her and her past and removed one from betwixt himself and her, he would not take her answer then, but begged her to think of all it must mean to him and let him ask her for it, once for all. when he came home from his next voyage- He was speeding homeward now, and the letter let-ter was to prepare her for his coming. He wrote it with so many pauses for reflection that by 10 o'clock it was still unfinished when, mindful of his patient, he relocked it in his desk. No. 16 was awake, but drowsy with sheer weakness. "The chest's still troublesome," he answered, with a feeble cheerfulness, "but I'm a trifle better, bet-ter, thanks." The doctor was not so sure of that. "We've got to keep your strength up somehow," some-how," he said; adding to the steward, "Get some beef tea for him, Barrow. I'll stay here while you're gone." The dim, stuffy lltle cabin was silent for awhile, except for the labored respiration of the sick man, who presently, becoming aware of the doctor's rutminlant scrutiny, roused himself to speak. "If I don't pull through this, doctor " "Don't worry about that; you will." "But if I don't I'm not afraid of dying. I've been near it too often for that; and yet, now, it seems harder than it ever did before." 4 "You'd better not talk, I don't want you to excite yourself." "Not me! What I mean is, it would be hard lurk to (Ke en the way home. I've been away nearly nine years. I went away as poor as a rat, and I'm going back rich. That's something, isn't it?" "It's a great deal." "To me it is. I didn't go out just because I'd got the gold fever.. . . It's out to the Klondike Klon-dike I've been, doctor; away beyond Dawson City, up the Yukon Lord! it's the kind of country coun-try ycu see in nightmares. I've been seeing it over and over in nightmares ever since I've been ill." "Don't think of it " "I wish I couldn't!" He laughed, but there was "a feverish brightness in his eyes, and his vo.ice quavered with suppressed excitement. "1 haven't had time to think of it till now." He went on talking, and Yalden listened absently, ab-sently, with strange doubts troubling his mind; and, so listening, he half-unconsciously fashioned from the other's words visions of vast snow wastes stretching into the night or the day, 'now silent and' lonely as-death, now blurred, and whirling, and howling with the fury of a storm, and, always deep in the desolation of it, a desperate des-perate little band of adventurers struggled forlornly, for-lornly, chasing a dream, starving, and falling, and dying, some of them, in the track of it; and here, at last, with the unimaginable terrors of that bleak wilderness left behind him, one of the few survivors had emerged triumphant, with his dream realized. Triumphant, so far. The doctor eyed him gloomily from under a frown. "And I'm not dead yet, though I'm supposed to be!" the other chuckled grimly. "One everlasting, ever-lasting, terrible winter we were snowed up miles away from anywhere, and we were put down ag done for. The wonder is that we were not. Only two of us managed to worry through, and we wandered wan-dered heaven only knows where, and we lived well, we didn't live. But we worried through and I'm going home." His eyes closed and ho rambled on dreamily: "Nine years! but she'll be waiting. I told her that it wouldn't be more than two and she said, 'It's till you come, Ned; and if you never come I shall wait, till I meet you, at the end.'" He lay quiet a minute, and then opening his eyes and finding the doctor regarding him Intently, In-tently, he continue" d: "We've never written to each other. We promised her people we wouldn't. She was to he free to change if she would; they said It 'was best. I hlad no money and no prospects, but if I went back a rich man and she had not changed. . . . 1 knew she never would. Whether I lived or died she said she would never changes and she won't." "Did you say your name was Edwin Ash ton?" The doctor was startled by the alien sound of his own voice. The sick man nodded, and, pointing across the cabin: "Her portrait's in my bag, doctor," he said. "Do you mind getting it for me? My will's in there, too. I made it as soon as I struck my first luck, in case. . . Oh, what I wanted to ask you, doctor, was If I don't pull lound, will you have my bag and eveiything sent to her? You'll find her address " "Yes, yes. But not now," Yalden interrupted harshly. "You-ve talked too much already. . . Come along, Barrow," he hailed the advent of the steward with ineffable relief. "Call me if he is worse in the night." He was dazed and stupefied by the knowledge that had come upon him so unexpectedly, and yearned to get away and be alone where he might think of it. Yet he could not think of it even1 when' he was alone, for every thought as it touched his brain flamed into madness and became an lnco-heient lnco-heient flicker that dazzled and baffled him. One thought only burned to a clear and fiercely steady blaze a sinister, hellish thought that he dared not face and could not extinguish. "My God!" he muttered, pacing his cramped room like a raged animal. "It's more than I can bear!" He lost all count of time, as a man does when he sleeps, but when the steward summoned him hurriedly an hour after midnight he had evidently evident-ly not been in bed; a light was burning in his cabin, he was still dressed, and his face was wan and his eyes heavy as if he were in pain. "Mr. Ashton's worse, sir. Edwards is with him, and called me to fetch you. He can't sleep. Keeps sitting up, Edwards says, staring as If he could see people, an' talking very sing'lar. Delirious, De-lirious, I expect, sir." ,We must try a sleeping draught," said Yalden Yal-den dully. "I'll be there directly." Barrow being gone, he busied himself In the medicine cupboard ,and hastened after him, car-lying car-lying something in a glass. Drawing near to No. 16 he could hear the sick man babbling monotonously, and the very sound of his voice stung him and quickened that fire of hell to a fiercer flame within him; till suddenly he caught a word of what the man was saying merely a name, but the utterance of it checked him instantly, as if a hand had plucked at his sleeve. He stood trembling, and in that same instant saw, shaping white in the darkness before him, a sweet, sad face, giown pale with weary years of longing the pure, wistful eyes looked Into his and their calmness calmed him, and their sadness sad-ness made him ashamed. He was sane again; lie could not go on, but yielded to gentler impulses as readily as if the utterance of her name had conjured her there in very leahty to turn him back, and he had regained re-gained his better self in her presence. With a something breaking like a sob in his throat, he swiftly retraced his steps, pausing in H the unlightod saloon to open one of the portholes H and fling the glass he carried far out into the H Thereafter, he sat till well Into the day watch- M ing and tending the man she loved and had loved H so long. He shrank from trusting himself alone H with his own thoughts again; and, because she H loved him and her happiness was bound up in his H life, all that unhappy night he fought with death H for the man he hated. H Going on deck in the morning, ho leaned over H the side to tear up the letter he had swrltteilN ' H and scattered Its fragments Into the sea. H It was the burial of a great hope that had died H in the night. H As he walked away, the captain, coming from H breakfast, met him and lingered to make in- H quliles. , M "Morning, doctor; how's- the patient? You're M not .going to make a funeral of it, I hope? i ' M "Not quite," Yalden laughed carelessly. "Ho , M has taken a turn for the better." St. Louis Mir- M |