“And those who drink water, think water.  The Elizabethans—­Sidney and Shakspeare, Burleigh and Queen Bess, worked on beef and ale,—­and you would not class them among the muddle-headed of the earth:  Believe me, to write well, you must live well.  If you take it out of your brain, you must put it in again.  It’s a question of fact.  Try it for yourself.”  And off Tom went; while Lucia rushed back to her husband, covered him with caresses, assured him that he was seven times as ill as he really was, and so nursed and petted him, that he felt himself, for that time at least, a beast and a fool for having suspected her for a moment.  Ah, woman, if you only knew how you carry our hearts in your hands, and would but use your power for our benefit, what angels you might make us all!

“So,” said Tom, as he went home, “he has found his way to the elevation-bottle, has he, as well as Mrs. Heale?  It’s no concern of mine:  but as a professional man, I must stop that.  You will certainly be no credit to me if you kill yourself under my hands.”

Tom went straight home, showed the blacksmith how to make a pair of dumb-bells, covered them himself with leather, and sent them up the next morning with directions to be used for half an hour morning and evening.

And something—­whether it was the dumb-bells, or the tonic, or wholesome fear of the terrible doctor—­kept Elsley for the next month in better spirits and temper than he had been in for a long while.

Moreover, Tom set Lucia to coax him into walking with Headley.  She succeeded at last; and, on the whole, each of them soon found that he had something to learn from the other.  Elsley improved daily in health, and Lucia wrote to Valencia flaming accounts of the wonderful doctor who had been cast on shore in their world’s end; and received from her after a while this, amid much more—­for fancy is not exuberant enough to reproduce the whole of a young lady’s letter.

“—­I am so ashamed.  I ought to have told you of that doctor a fortnight ago; but, rattle-pate as I am, I forgot all about it.  Do you know, he is Sabina Mellot’s dearest friend; and she begged me to recommend him to you; but I put it off, and then it slipped my memory, like everything else good.  She has told me the most wonderful stories of his courage and goodness; and conceive—­she and her husband were taken prisoners with him by the savages in the South Seas, and going to be eaten, she says:  but he helped them to escape in a canoe—­such a story—­and lived with them for three months on the most beautiful desert island—­it is all like a fairy tale.  I’ll tell it you when I come, darling—­which I shall do in a fortnight, and we shall be all so happy.  I have such a box ready for you and the chicks, which I shall bring with me; and some pretty things from Scoutbush beside, who is very low, poor fellow, I cannot conceive what about:  but wonderfully tender about you.  I fancy he must be in love; for he