of his doings. At first he wrote occasionally to Peter, his head
servant, to whom he entrusted the care of the house; then his letters
ceased and nothing was heard from him until suddenly, without warning,
he came home, looking much older than when he went away, and with a look
upon his face which did not leave it as the days went on.

"'Spect he had a high old time with that Tom Hardy, and is all tuckered
out," Peter said, while the Colonel, thinking he must give some reason
for his changed demeanor, said he had malaria, taken in some Southern
swamp.

If there was any disease for which Peter had a special aversion it was
malaria, which he fancied he knew how to treat, having had it once
himself. Quinine, cholagogue, and whiskey were prescribed in large
quantities, and Peter wondered why they failed to cure. He did not
suspect that the quinine went into the fire, and the cholagogue down the
drain-pipe from the washstand. The Colonel's malaria was not the kind to
be cured by drugs, and there came a day when, after the receipt of a
letter from Tom Hardy, he collapsed entirely, and Peter found him
shivering in his room, his teeth chattering, and his fingers purple with
cold.

"You have got it bad this time," Peter said, suggesting the doctor, and
more quinine and cholagogue, and a dose of Warburg's Tincture.

The Colonel declined them all. What he needed was another blanket, and
to be let alone. Peter brought the blanket and left him alone, while he
faced this new trouble which bore no resemblance to malaria. He was just
beginning to be more hopeful of the future, and had his plans all laid,
and knew what he should do and say, and now this new complication had