“Will you go to his wife at once, sir, and inform her of his condition?” said Beulah, who stood by the blood-stained pillow, pale and anxious.

“Don’t you know his wife is not here?  She has gone for the summer.  Wife! did I say?  She does not deserve the sacred name!  If he had had a wife he would never have come to this ruin and disgrace.  It is nothing more than I expected when he married her.  I could easily put her soul on the end of a lancet, and as for heart—­she has none at all!  She is a pretty flirt, fonder of admiration than of her husband.  I will write by the earliest mail, informing Graham of the accident and its possible consequences, and perhaps respect for the opinion of the world may bring her home to him.  Beulah, it is a difficult matter to believe that that drunken, stupid victim there is Eugene Graham, who promised to become an honor to his friends and his name.  Satan must have established the first distillery; the institution smacks of the infernal!  Child, keep ice upon that head, will you, and see that as soon as possible he takes a spoonful of the medicine I mixed just now.  I am afraid it will be many days before he leaves this house.  If he lives, the only consolation is that it may be a lesson and warning to him.  I will be back in an hour or so.  As for Proctor, whom I met limping home, it would have been a blessing to the other young men of the city, and to society generally, if he had never crawled out of the sand where he was thrown.”

A little while after the silence was broken by a heavy sob, and, glancing up, Beulah perceived the matron standing near the bed, gazing at the sleeper.

“Oh, that he should come to this!  I would ten thousand times rather he had died in his unstained boyhood.”

“If he lives, this accident may be his salvation.”

“God grant it may—­God grant it may!”

Falling on her knees, the aged woman put up a prayer of passionate entreaty, that Almighty God would spare his life and save him from a drunkard’s fate.

“If I, too, could pray for him, it might ease my aching heart,” thought Beulah, as she listened to the imploring words of the matron.

And why not?  Ah! the murky vapors of unbelief shrouded the All-Father from her wandering soul.  Dawn looked in upon two sorrowing watchers beside that stupid slumberer, and showed that the physician’s fears were realized; a raging fever had set in, and this night was but the commencement of long and weary vigils.  About noon Beulah was crossing the hall with a bowl of ice in her hand, when someone at the door pronounced her name, and Proctor approached her, accompanied by Cowdon.  She had once met the former at Mr. Graham’s, and, having heard Cornelia regret the miserable influence he exerted over her brother, was prepared to receive him coldly.

“We have come to see Graham, madam,” said he, shrinking from her sad, searching eyes, yet assuming an air of haughty indifference.