"Well, Coverdale," cried he, "you bid fair to make an admirable
farmer! Don't you mean to get up to-day?"

"Neither to-day nor to-morrow," said I hopelessly. "I doubt if I
ever rise again!"

"What is the matter now?" he asked.

I told him my piteous case, and besought him to send me back to town
in a close carriage.

"No, no!" said Hollingsworth with kindly seriousness. "If you are
really sick, we must take care of you."

Accordingly he built a fire in my chamber, and, having little else to
do while the snow lay on the ground, established himself as my nurse.
A doctor was sent for, who, being homaeopathic, gave me as much
medicine, in the course of a fortnight's attendance, as would have
laid on the point of a needle. They fed me on water-gruel, and I
speedily became a skeleton above ground. But, after all, I have many
precious recollections connected with that fit of sickness.

Hollingsworth's more than brotherly attendance gave me inexpressible
comfort. Most men--and certainly I could not always claim to be one
of the exceptions--have a natural indifference, if not an absolutely
hostile feeling, towards those whom disease, or weakness, or calamity
of any kind causes to falter and faint amid the rude jostle of our
selfish existence. The education of Christianity, it is true, the
sympathy of a like