settling down to business,--but here night and darkness had set in more
than an hour before. Indeed, in these beds of languishing, which
stretched away down either side of the ward, night was hardly to be
distinguished from day, save for the sunlight and the occasional
excitement of the doctor's visit; and many there were who cried to
themselves in the morning, "Would God it were evening!" and in the
evening, "Would God it were morning!" But there was yet this other
difference, that disease and doctor, fear and hope, gossip and
grumbling, newspaper and Bible and tract, were all forgotten in the
night, for some time at least, and Nature's kind restorer, sleep, went
softly round among the beds and soothed the weary spirits into peace.

Lefevre and the house-physician passed silently up the ward between the
rows of silent blue-quilted beds, while the nurse came silently to meet
them with her lamp. Lefevre turned aside a moment to look at a man whose
breathing was laboured and stertorous. The shaded light was turned upon
him: an opiate had been given him to induce sleep; it had performed its
function, but, as if resenting its bondage, it was impishly twitching
the man's muscles and catching him by the throat, so that he choked and
started. Dr Lefevre raised the man's eyelid to look at his eye: the
upturned eye stared out upon him, but the man slept on. He put his hand
on the man's forehead (he had a beautiful hand--the hand of a born
surgeon and healer--fine but firm, the expression of nervous force), and
with thumb and finger stroked first his temples and then his neck. The
spasmodic twitching ceased, and his breath came easy and regular. The
house-doctor and the nurse looked at each other in admiration of this
subtle skill, while Lefevre turned away and passed on.

"Where is the man?" said he.