"I will see him safely through this," he said to himself, "and then----"
And then the account between them must be squared somehow. Gilbert Fenton
had no thought of any direful vengeance. He belonged to an age in which
injuries are taken very quietly, unless they are wrongs which the law can
redress--wounds which can be healed by a golden plaster in the way of
damages.
He could not kill his friend; the age of duelling was past, and he not
romantic enough to be guilty of such an anachronism as mortal combat. Yet
nothing less than a duel to the death could avenge such a wrong.
So friendship was at an end between those two, and that was all; it was
only the utter severance of a tie that had lasted for years, nothing
more. Yet to Gilbert it seemed a great deal. His little world had
crumbled to ashes; love had perished, and now friendship had died this
sudden bitter death, from which there was no possible resurrection.
In the midst of such thoughts as these he remembered the sick man's
medicine. Mrs. Pratt had given him a few hurried directions before
departing on her errand. He looked at his watch, and then went over to
the table and prepared the draught and administered it with a firm and
gentle hand.
"Who's that?" John Saltram muttered faintly. "It seems like the touch of
a friend.
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