So we watch through the night hours, in dull misery and
fear, a phantom at the window pane: so must we wait till
the slow morning shows dim and pale at the windows.
Then he comes out from the room. His face is furrowed
with the fatigue of his long vigil. But as he speaks the
tone of his voice is as that of one who has fought and
conquered.
"There--he'll do now. Give him this when he wakes."
Then a great joy sweeps over us as the phantom flees
away, and we shudder back into the warm sunshine of life,
while the sound of the doctor's retreating sleighbells
makes music to our ears.
And once it was not so. The morning dawned and he did
not come from the darkened room: only there came to our
listening ears at times the sound of a sob or moan, and
the doctor's voice, firm and low, but with all hope gone
from it.
And when at last he came, his face seemed old and sad as
we had never seen it. He paused a moment on the threshold
and we heard him say, "I have done all that I can." Then
he beckoned us into the darkened room, and, for the first
time, we knew Death.
All that is forty years ago.
They tell me that, since then, the practice of medicine
has been vastly improved.
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