John really began to feel that he was getting to be master of his own fields at last.  He attended to his duties at the drug store with such punctilious care that his employer, Mr. Wyatt, nodded approval more than once.

After all, John might become a safe druggist yet, if he didn’t suffer himself to lapse into his old ways.  He did not stop to dream, as formerly, when compounding pills, and he washed all his dingy bottles so thoroughly that they began to shine like cut glass.

“He would be a credit to the business,” said old Mr. Wyatt, who always spoke of his business as if it were spelled with a capital B, and thought it the very finest business in the world for a man to be in.

One afternoon in March Doctor Pratt came hurriedly into the store and said to Mr. Wyatt: 

“Put up half a dozen of these powders, will you, Wyatt?  Here’s the full prescription.  Squire Shirley has got one of his acute attacks of neuralgia again, and my medicine-chest was empty.  I’ll call for them in fifteen minutes.”

Then the overworked little doctor jumped into his gig, and was off like a flash.

“You’d better do it, John,” said Mr. Wyatt.  “I can’t see in this poor light.”

“Very well, sir,” said John.

And, as he began to neatly fold the white slips of paper, he wondered if the squire were really as ill as Doctor Pratt pretended he was.

The good doctor was fond of making a fuss about trifles, to add to his own importance.

Margaret and Celia had been out driving that afternoon, for John had seen them from the drug-store windows.

If they had come home, they were probably rushing distracted about the house, trying all the possible and impossible remedies they had ever heard of to relieve him.  John hoped they were not feeling too unhappy about it—­the squire would doubtless be all right in a few hours.

John lived with his aunt, not far from Squire Shirley’s, and, as he passed the large brick mansion, he noticed that there were many lights there that night.

Usually there was a light only in the library so late as this.  None of the curtains had been drawn, which was certainly an unusual state of affairs.

A broad flood of light streamed from one of the front windows toward the gate.  A girlish, uncovered head was leaning dejectedly against the cold, icy gate-post, and the light turned the fluffy blonde hair into a shining aureole.

“Miss Kirke!” John exclaimed, in amazement.  “What is the matter?  Is—­is Squire Shirley worse?”

“Noth—­nothing is the matter,” faltered Celia, making a few ineffectual dabs at her tear-swollen eyes with her handkerchief.  “That is—­everything is the matter.  They have given my uncle an over-dose of opium.  There was too much in the powders, the doctor says—­a great deal more than the prescription calls for.  Doctor Pratt is with him now, and they are trying to keep him awake.  If he is allowed to go to sleep, he will die.  They are walking him back and forth, though he implores them to let him sleep.  I couldn’t bear to see it any longer, it was too, too dreadful!  Oh, how can people be so criminally careless?”