The Breaking Point

That night David had a caller. All evening the bell had been ringing,

and the little card tray on the hatrack was filled with visiting cards.

There were gifts, too, flowers and jellies and some squab from Mrs.

Sayre. Lucy had seen no one, excusing herself on the ground of fatigue,

but the man who came at nine o'clock was not inclined to be turned away.

"You take this card up to Doctor Livingstone, anyhow," he said. "I'll

wait."

He wrote in pencil on the card, placing it against the door post to do

so, and passed it to Minnie. She calmly read it, and rather defiantly

carried it off. But she came down quickly, touched by some contagion of

expectation from the room upstairs.

"Hang your hat on the rack and go on up."

So it was that David and the reporter met, for the first time, in

David's old fashioned chamber, with its walnut bed and the dresser with

the marble top, and Dick's picture in his uniform on the mantle.

Bassett was shocked at the sight of David, shocked and alarmed. He was

uncertain at first as to the wisdom of telling his startling story to an

obviously sick man, but David's first words reassured him.

"Come in," he said. "You are the Bassett who was with Doctor Livingstone

at Norada?"

"Yes. I see you know about it."

"We know something, not everything." Suddenly David's pose deserted him.

He got up and stood very straight, searching eyes on his visitor. "Is he

living?" he asked, in a low voice.

"I think so. I'm not certain."

"Then you don't know where he is?"

"No. He got away--but you know that. Sit down, doctor. I've got a long

story to tell."

"I'll get you to call my sister first," David said. "And tell her to

get Harrison Miller. Mr. Miller is our neighbor, and he very kindly went

west when my health did not permit me to go."

While they waited David asked only one question.

"The report we have had is that he was in a stupor in the hotel, and the

doctor who saw him--you got him, I think--said he appeared to have been

drinking heavily. Is that true? He was not a drinking man."

"I am quite sure he had not."

There was another question in David's mind, but he did not put it. He

sat, with the patience of his age and his new infirmity, waiting for

Lucy to bring Harrison Miller, and had it not been for the trembling of

his hands Bassett would have thought him calm and even placid.