3


A year passed slowly by, and at the end of it Dr. Laidlaw had found it
necessary to sever his working connexion with his friend and one-time
leader. Professor Ebor was no longer the same man. The light had gone
out of his life; the laboratory was closed; he no longer put pen to
paper or applied his mind to a single problem. In the short space of
a few months he had passed from a hale and hearty man of late middle
life to the condition of old age--a man collapsed and on the edge of
dissolution. Death, it was plain, lay waiting for him in the shadows of
any day--and he knew it.

To describe faithfully the nature of this profound alteration in his
character and temperament is not easy, but Dr. Laidlaw summed it up to
himself in three words: _Loss of Hope_. The splendid mental powers
remained indeed undimmed, but the incentive to use them--to use them for
the help of others--had gone. The character still held to its fine and
unselfish habits of years, but the far goal to which they had been the
leading strings had faded away. The desire for knowledge--knowledge for
its own sake--had died, and the passionate hope which hitherto had
animated with tireless energy the heart and brain of this splendidly
equipped intellect had suffered total eclipse. The central fires had
gone out. Nothing was worth doing, thinking, working for. There _was_
nothing to work for any longer!