The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866, page 109 by Various Authors
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er. Of sickness, or of the little offices of friends which cheat it of pains, the old gentleman knows nothing: sick souls only have been his care. And it is pitiful to see his blundering, eager efforts to do something, as he totters round the sick-chamber where Reuben, with very much of youthful vigor left in him, makes fight against the arch-enemy who one day conquers us all. For many days after his arrival there is no consciousness,--only wild words (at times words that sound to the ears of the good Doctor strangely wicked, and that make him groan in spirit),--tender words, too, of dalliance, and eager, loving glances,--murmurs of boyish things, of sunny, school-day noonings,--hearing which, the Doctor thinks that, if this light must go out, it had better have gone out in those days of comparative innocence.
Over and over the father appeals to the village physician to know what the chances may be,--to which that old gentleman, fumbling his watch-key, and looking grave, makes very doubtful response. He hints at a possible undermining of the constitution in these later years of city life.
God only knows what habits the young man may have formed in these last years; surely the Doctor does not; and he tells the physician as much, with a groan of anguish.
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Meantime, Maverick and Adèle have gone upon their melancholy search; and, as they course over the island to the southern beach, the sands, the plains, the houses, the pines, drift by the eye of Adèle as in a dream. At last she sees a great reach of water,--piling up, as it rolls lazily in from seaward, into high walls of waves, that are no sooner lifted than they break and send sparkling floods of foam over the sands. Bits of wreck, dark clots of weed, are strewed here and there,--stragglers scanning every noticeable heap, every floating thing that comes in.
Is she dead? is she living? They have heard only on the way that many bodies are lying in the near houses,--many bruised and suffering ones; while