He came again on the next day and the next, and so on until he was satisfied that all was going on very well, he said, but he would not suffer my father’s will to be opened for a week, knowing that my presence would be necessary at the reading, and he permitted no disturbance of any kind to approach me during that interval of probation.

“Do you think you could get through with a few business details to-morrow?” he asked me on the last day of his visit.  “They all seem very impatient, though I cannot see why.”

“I think so, Dr. Pemberton.”

“Well, then, notify Mr. Bainrothe to make ready for you in the library at any hour you may fix upon.  He was your father’s attorney, it seems, and had the will in his keeping.  Of course it will be a very simple matter to carry out its provisions, since all was fixed before, as every one knows, but there may be some little agitation.  Now, don’t give way, I charge you.”

“How can I help it.  Dr. Pemberton?”

“Oh, with a will like yours, one can do a great deal.  I had an obstinate patient once determined not to die, and she did not die, though death was due.  Resistance is natural to some temperaments.  Yours is one of them.  Fight off those attacks, Miriam, in future.”

“I will try,” I said, half amused at his suggestion, “but, if all physicians gave such prescriptions, medicine would be at a discount.”

“Not at all.  Medicine is a great aid in any case—­I have never thought it more.  A doctor is only a pilot; he steers a ship sometimes past dangerous places on which it would founder otherwise, but he never pretends, unless he is a charlatan, to upheave shoals and rocks, or to control tempests.  He can only mind his rudder and shift his sails; the rest is with Providence.  Now, suppose the captain of this ship is calm and firm, and coincides with the pilot’s efforts, instead of counteracting and embarrassing them.  Don’t you see the advantage to the ship?”

“Oh, certainly, and I admire the ingenuity of your allegory.  You must have been studying Bunyan, lately.”

“No, Miriam, I have little time for books, save those necessary to my profession.  I study a mightier volume daily than scholar ever wrote—­the wondrous mind and body of man, the one illustrated by the other, and both so mutually dependent that short-sighted people have occasionally confounded them, yet distinct after all as God and the universe.”

“I am glad to hear you say this; doctors are so often accused of being materialists.”

“No men living have less excuse for being so.  The phenomenon of death alone ought to set that matter at rest in any reasoning mind.  The impalpable is gone, and the material perishes.  It is so plain that he that runs might read, one would think.  That sudden change from volition to inertia is, in itself, conviction to every right-seeing mind.”

“Yet I wish we knew more,” I mused, aloud.  “We ought to know more, it seems to me.  God has not told us half enough for our satisfaction.  It is so cruel to leave us in the dark, lit only by partial flashes of lightning.  If we were certain of the future, we could bear separation better from those we love.  It would not seem so hopeless.”