was at last failing him. "Before she was composed enough to think
of the letter, her husband had asked for it, and had caused it to
be locked up in his desk. She knows that he has since, time after
time, tried to finish it, and that, time after time, the pen has
dropped from his fingers. She knows, when all other hope of his
restoration was at an end, that his medical advisers encouraged
him to hope in the famous waters of this place. And last, she
knows how that hope has ended; for she knows what I told her
husband this morning."

The frown which had been gathering latterly on Mr. Neal's face
deepened and darkened. He looked at the doctor as if the doctor
had personally offended him.

"The more I think of the position you are asking me to take,"
he said, "the less I like it. Can you undertake to say positively
that Mr. Armadale is in his right mind?"

"Yes; as positively as words can say it."

"Does his wife sanction your coming here to request my
interference?"

"His wife sends me to you--the only Englishman in Wildbad--to
write for your dying countryman what he cannot write for himself;
and what no one else in this place but you can write for him."

That answer drove Mr. Neal back to the last inch of ground left
him to stand on. Even on that inch the Scotchman resisted still.