to leave[14] him. There self came in again, since other sufferers might need the young Samaritan’s care; but the case seemed desperate, and he could not bear to refuse a manifestly dying man’s request. [13] [14] In such manner began the friendship between Paul Gastineau and Geoffrey Herriard. Now, within the next few days, chance, that had brought Gastineau to this pass, continued a sequel which had a singular and important bearing upon the future of the two men it had thrown together. Gastineau, having been carried to the monastery and tended by the monks, ever ready for such an office of mercy, lay for days in a semi-comatose condition on the borderland between life and death. He was but one of some dozen victims under the care of these good brothers who, simple and practically dead to the world beyond their narrow sphere, took little heed of their patients’ identities; they were to them simply suffering men whose pain called forth their loving service. Presently, to their joy and Herriard’s satisfaction, Gastineau, who had seemed doomed, began to mend. He regained in a surprising degree his mental faculties; the doctor shook his head at any idea of complete recovery; he could never walk again, but, with care till the crisis was well past, he would live. It was wonderful, wonderful, he declared; not one man in a thousand would have survived such an injury, but the vitality of the Señor Inglese was the most marvellous he had ever known; it was a revelation; and, after all, though most of us die when we need not, there are some subjects whom it is absurdly difficult to kill. But then look at him. Did one ever see such unmistakable power in any one as this dark, resolute Englishman manifested?[15] Were all mankind built of that steel-like fibre physicians would be few. But to give him the best chance it would be well to remove him to the air of the mountains, and the sooner it was done the better. [15] Accordingly, early one morning, the patient, accompanied by Herriard, was driven off on a journey of some half-dozen leagues to the restorative atmosphere the doctor had suggested. Now it happened that, an hour after their departure, death, as though determined not to be twice baulked, struck his dart at one of the patients who remained at the monastery, an Englishman also, a stockbroker of travelling proclivities whose proposed itinerary had scarcely included the River Styx. During the morning the reporter of the local
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