bawling at him, the messenger said.  Bawling at him, Joseph repeated after the messenger, and the messenger repeated the words, bawling at him, and saying that the physician said the master’s swoon was like a wall and that he must get him to hear him somehow.  He said the effort would cost your father, Sir, a great deal, but he must get him to hear him.  The story as the servant related it seemed incredible, but he reflected that servants’ stories are always incredible, and Joseph learned with increasing wonder that Dan had heard the physician and sat up in bed and spoken reasonably, but had fallen back again unconscious, and that the physician on leaving him said that they must get his mouth open somehow and pour a spoonful of milk into his mouth, and call upon him as loudly as they could to swallow.  What physician have they sent for?  Joseph asked the messenger, but he could not remember the name.

It was Ecanus who was sitting by Dan’s bedside when Joseph arrived, and Joseph learnt by careful nursing and feeding him every ten minutes there was just a chance of saving Dan’s life.

For seven days Dan’s life receded, and it was not till the eighth day the wheel of life paused on the edge of the abyss.  Dan, with his eyes turned up under the eyelids, only the white showing, lay motionless; and it was not till the morning of the ninth day that the wheel began to revolve back again; but so slow were its revolutions that Joseph was in doubt for two or three days.  But on the fifth day he was sure that Dan was mending, and in about three days more the pupils of Dan’s eyes looked at his son’s from under the eyelids.  He spoke a few words and took his milk more easily, without being asked to swallow.  The pains in his head returned with consciousness; he often moaned; the doctor was obliged to give him opiates, but he continued to mend and in three weeks was speaking of going out to walk in the garden.  To gain his end he often showed a certain childish cunning, urging Joseph on one occasion to go to the verandah to see if somebody was coming up the garden, and as soon as Joseph’s back was turned he slipped out of bed with the intention of getting to his clothes.  He fell, without, however, hurting himself, and was put back to bed and kept there for three more weeks before he was allowed a short walk.  Even then the concession seemed to be given too soon; for he could not distinguish the different trees, nor could he see the parrots, though he could hear them, and he remained in purblindness for some two or three weeks; but his sight returned, and he said to Joseph:  that is a palm-tree and that is a pepper-tree.  Joseph answered that he said truly and hastened across the garden to meet Ecanus, for he desired to ask him privily if his father were out of all danger; and the answer to his question was that Dan’s life would pass away in a swoon like the one he had just come out of, but he might swoon many times—­two or three times, perhaps oftener—­before he swooned for the last time.  More than that Ecanus could not say.  A silence fell suddenly between them, and wondering what term of life his father had still to traverse before he swooned into eternity, Joseph followed the physician through the wilting alleys, seeking the shadiest parts, for the summer was well-nigh upon them now.