The next call was at a patient’s who had a slight attack of grippe.  Doctor Gordon left James there, saying that he would make another call and be back for him directly.  James noticed how he urged the horses out of the drive at almost a run.  He was back soon, and James having made up his prescription, went out and got into the sleigh.  Doctor Gordon looked at him gloomily.  “He is no longer where he has been staying,” he said, and his face settled into a stern melancholy.  That evening, although the storm continued, he suggested a visit to Georgie K.’s; and at supper time he insisted upon Clemency’s occupying another room that night.  “The wind is on your side of the house,” he said, “and I am afraid you will take more cold.”  Clemency stared and pouted, then said, “All right, Uncle Tom!”

CHAPTER VI

Even the apple-jack and euchre at Georgie K.’s were not sufficient to entirely establish Doctor Gordon in his devil-may-care mood.  Georgie K. kept looking at him with solicitation, which had something tender about it.  “Don’t you feel well, Doc?” he asked.

“Never felt better in my life,” returned Gordon quickly.  “To-night I am feeling particularly good, because I really think I have evolved an utterly new theory of death and disease which ought to make me famous, if I ever get a chance to write a book about it.”

Georgie K. stared at him inquiringly.

“I don’t know that you will understand, old man,” said Gordon, “but here it is.  It is simple in one way.  Nobody will deny that we come of the earth; well, we are sick and die of the earth.  We grow old and weary and drop into our graves, because of the tremendous, though unconscious and involuntary, wear upon nerves and muscles and emotion which is required to keep us here at all.  Gravitation kills us all in the end, just as surely as if we fell off a precipice.  Gravitation is the destroyer, and gravitation is earth-force.  The same monster which produces us devours us.  That’s so.  I hope I shall get a chance to write that book.  Clubs are trumps; pass.”

“Sure you are well, Doc?” inquired Georgie K., again scowling anxiously.

“Never felt better, didn’t I just say so?  You are a regular old hen, Georgie K. You cluck at a fellow like a setting hen at one chicken.”

Still Doctor Gordon’s gloomy face, although he tried to be jocular, did not relax.  Going home late that night, or rather early next morning, he laid his hand heavily on James’s shoulder.

“Boy, I am about at the finish!” he groaned out.

“Now, see here, Doctor Gordon, can’t I be of some assistance if you were to tell me?” asked James.  He passed his hand under the older man’s arm, and helped him through a snowdrift as if he had been his father.  A great compassion filled his heart.

But Gordon only groaned out a great sigh.  “No,” he said.  “Secrecy is the one shield I have.  I don’t say weapon, but shield.  In these latter days we try to content ourselves with shields; and secrecy is the strongest shield on earth.  If I were going to commit a crime, I should never even intimate the slightest motive for it to any man living.  I should trust no man living to help me through with it.”