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The weakness and the languor that kept Homer Sivewright a prisoner in his bedroom were not the tokens of mortal illness. Death kept as yet at a respectful distance. The patient's life might be prolonged even to man's appointed measure of three score and ten, with care and skilful treatment. There was organic disease, but of a mild type. Lucius was not without hopes of a rally-that a period of perfect repose and quiet might, in some measure, restore the enfeebled frame-which, gaunt and wasted by sickness, was yet so mighty a skeleton. The man was tough; a creature of strong fibres, and muscles that had once been like iron. Above all, his life had been strictly temperate. Lucius augured well from these facts. The disease would remain always, more or less subject to treatment, but there might be a partial recovery.
‘You need not be anxious,' he said, when Lucille questioned him earnestly about her grandfather. ‘Mr. Sivewright will be a long time dying. Or, in other words, he will fight hard with Death. We may keep him alive for some years longer, Lucille, if we take trouble.'