CHAPTER XXX

THE SECRET VICE REVEALED

On the day preceding Christmas, late in the afternoon, Roger Atwood boarded a steamer which had just arrived from a Southern city.  His uncle, the commission merchant, was expecting a consignment of tropical fruits, and as the young man stood among others waiting to see the freight clerk, he overheard one of the vessel’s officers remark, “His name is Jocelyn—­so papers on his person indicate—­and he must be sent to a hospital as soon as possible.”

Advancing promptly to the speaker, Roger said, “I overheard your remark, sir, and think I know the gentleman to whom you refer.  If I am right, I will take him to his family immediately.”

The officer acted with such alacrity as to prove that he was very glad to get the sick man off his hands, and Roger noted the fact.  A moment later he saw Martin Jocelyn, sadly changed for the worse, and lying unconscious in a berth.

“I am right, I am very sorry to say,” Roger said, after a moment, with a long, deep breath.  “This will be a terrible shock to his family.”

“Do you think he is dying?” the officer asked.

“I don’t know.  I will bring a physician and take Mr. Jocelyn home on one condition—­that our consignment of produce is delivered at once.  I must be absent, and my employer’s interests must not suffer in consequence.  I am doing you a favor, and you must return it just as promptly.”

The freight clerk was summoned, and Roger was assured that his uncle’s consignment should take the precedence as fast as it could be reached.  The young man then hastened to find the nearest physician, stopping a moment at his place of business to give a hurried explanation of his course.  Mr. Atwood listened in silence, and nodded merely; but, as Roger hastened away, he muttered, “This mixing himself up with other people’s troubles isn’t very shrewd, but his making capital out of it so that my consignment will all be delivered to-night is—­well, we’ll call it even.  He’s no fool.”

The physician was rather young and inexperienced, and he pronounced Mr. Jocelyn’s trouble to be congestion of the brain.  He agreed to go with Roger to the old mansion and do what he could for the patient, although holding out slight hope of recovery.

“She is learning to associate me with misfortune, and will dread my presence as if I were a bird of ill-omen,” Roger groaned mentally, as he recalled the several miserable occasions which, in the mind of Mildred, were inseparably connected with himself; “but some day—­some day, if I have to strive for a lifetime—­she shall also learn that it is not I who bring the trouble.”