The Argosy — page 270: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Mrs. Raven’s Temptation. 24g She shook her head. ‘‘He may lie so for days now, the doctors say. One can scarcely call it unconsciousness—it is that deep sleep of exhaustion, which they say often follows such seizures.” “What do they call itr—a fit of some kind?” Frank asked. They were now in sight of the house. ‘He had fits of an epileptic type when he was a child,” she said : ‘Cas he grew stronger, they entirely ceased. But now it would seem that the evil had been only slumbering all the time.” ‘ But what was it that brought it on?” Frank inquired, wonder- ing. ‘Have you found out whether Leonard saw anything? Did Budd or Fisher see anything ?” ‘They saw nothing,” she replied. ‘‘ Budd says he seemed to hear something else after the cry: but he was running himself then, and cannot say what it was. Leonard, of course, has been able to tell us nothing. The doctors say that the mere excitement of the occasion, wrought to its highest pitch as he neared the hut in Ash Lane, might suffice to produce this effect on a predisposed frame. The Stand- chester doctor says that no reliance must be placed on any statement Leonard may make after he recovers.” As Frank assisted his mother to alight, he reflected with thankful- ness that at any rate Leonard had not been troubled about the strange appearance of his father’s ring at Coltburn. He knew his brother’s. irritability and his sensitiveness to family repute, and he was inclined to think that the ruffling of these emotions had prepared a sickly and predisposed frame to suddenly succumb to the enemy lurking latent within it. Frank went straight to his brother’s room. But there was no use in lingering there. ‘The poor squire lay wrapped in deadly slumber. Two trained nurses were in attendance, under the orders of the Standchester doctor, Dr. Wragge. One of them, Mary Bray, was well known in the neighbourhood; the other was a stranger, who it was presumed was special to this line of work, and at whom the servants looked with awe and deference, while Mary Bray watched her with jealous gaze. The strange nurse was a little woman with a pale face and black eyes, and her every movement betokened thorough training and discipline. She wore a brown dress, so severely plain that it was. clearly a uniform, and Dr. Wragge addressed her as ‘‘ Nurse Hannah.” Frank persuaded Mrs. Raven to go to her chamber and lie down. She obeyed him in an automatic kind of way. She was as one stunned. The sleep which had fallen upon Leonard’s whole frame, almost seemed to have seized her mind. But there was nothing very strange in that. Nature always has her anodynes, and pain itself passes into a narcotic. The young man went up to his own li:tle room. How strange it looked! A change in ourselves makes a change of scene in the most COMMICOOOKS. EO