Clayton, I hear you groaning
grievously, and I fancy I could relieve you. The laying on of hands is a
sort of gift of mine; let me try by such means to ease your pain."
"Thank you, Miss Monfort," very dryly, "you are very kind, indeed, but I
don't think you can relieve me. I have excruciating neuralgia in my
eyebones and temples, and my hands are cramped again. Dinah has been
rubbing, without bettering them, for the last half hour."
"Let me try," and, without farther parley, I sat down to my
self-appointed, loathed, and detested task, first quietly dismissing
Dinah to the next room, where Ernie was eating his supper, and I knew
would soon be wanting to be put to bed. We changed places for a time,
and it was not long before Mrs. Clayton pronounced the pain in her eyes
"almost gone." The experiment was a desperate one, and I bore to it all
the powers of my organization--mental and physical--and had the
satisfaction in less than an hour to see her sleeping profoundly. She
had been failing fast under her painful vigils, and I knew that a few
hours of refreshing sleep would be worth to her more than all the drugs
in the Pharmacopoeia. Now came the test which was to make this slumber
worth nothing or every thing to me. If she could be awakened from it
without my coincidence, it would prove, perhaps, only a snare to my
feet, but if her waking depended on my will, then might I indeed hope to
baffle my Dragon, and, as far as she was concerned, make sure of my
escape.
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