“Shake hands with me, doctor,” pleaded Lot, with a curious change of tone, “to show you bear no grudge for the breakfast you lost.”

The doctor stared a second, then went up to him with extended hand, looking at him seriously.  He thought Lot’s illness had begun to affect his mind.

“Keep yourself quiet, and you may outlive the best of us,” he said, soothingly, as if to a child or a woman, shook Lot’s lean hand kindly, repeated his good-day, and was gone.

Lot waited until he heard the outer door close.  Then he tinkled his bell for Margaret Bean.  “When are they coming home?” he asked, shortly, when she stood beside him.

“His mother said she was expectin’ of ’em Saturday.”

“Get my clothes out of the closet, will you,” said Lot.

“You ain’t a-goin’ to get up?”

“Yes, I’m better; get the clothes.”

When Margaret Bean had laid the clothes out ready for him, and was gone, Lot laid still a moment, reflecting, with his eyes on the ceiling.  He wished to cough, but with an effort he checked it, gasping once or twice.  “Saturday,” he said, aloud.  “To-day is Wednesday—­three days.  Can I wait?” He paused; then as if answering another self, he said, “No; I could die a thousand deaths in that time.  I can’t wait.”

Lot Gordon got up, moving by inches, with infinite care and pains, dressed himself, crawled out of his bedroom into his library, which was adjoining, and sat down at his desk.  Margaret Bean came timidly to the door, and inquired if he did not want some breakfast.  She had to repeat her query three times, he was writing so busily, and then he answered her “no” as if his thoughts were elsewhere.  The old woman hungrily eyed the paper upon which he was scribbling, and went away with lingering backward glances.

Lot Gordon, bending painfully over his desk, using his quill pen, with wary motions of hand and wrist alone, that he might not jar his wounded side, wrote a letter to the bride upon her wedding-journey.

“Madelon,” wrote Lot, “I pray you to pardon what I have done, and what I am about to do.  The danger of blood-guiltiness and death have I brought upon you, and I now save you in the only way I know.  I pray you, when you read this, and know what I have done, that you think of me with what charity you may, and that the love which caused the deed may be its saving grace.”

Lot sat looking at what he had written for a moment, then tore it up, and wrote again: 

“Madelon,—­Alive I claimed nothing, dead I claim your memory, for the sake of the love for which I died.”

And, after a moment, tore up that also.

And then he wrote again, with quivering lips, yet breathing guardedly: