This
effort he could recall, in the shape of an intermina--ble season
during which he supported the world for Atlas, that he might get a
little sleep; but it was only the aching weight of his own
microcosm that he urged Atlanlean force to carry. They took him
direct to the room where he now lay, for they had them--selves but
one chamber, and if they took him there, what would become of the
old bones to which the gardener was so fond of referring in his
colloquies with himself? Also, it might be some fever he had taken,
and their own lives were so much the more precious that so much of
them was gone! Like most of us, they were ready to do THEIR NEXT
BEST for him. They spared some of their own poor comforts to
furnish the skeleton bed for him; and there he lay, like one adrift
in a rotten boat on the ebbing ocean of life, while the old woman
trudged away to the village to tell the doctor that there was a
young Scotch gardener taken suddenly ill at their quarters in the
castle.
The doctor sent his son, a man about thirty, who after travelling
some years as medical attendant to a nobleman, had settled in his
native village as his father's partner. He prescribed for Cosmo,
and gave hope that there was nothing infectious about the case.
Every day during the week he had come to see him, and the night
before had been with him from dark to dawn.
The gardener's wife had informed Lady Joan that a young Scotchman
who had come to her husband seeking employment, had been taken
suddenly ill, and was lying in a room in the old wing; and Lady
Joan had said she would speak to the housekeeper to let her have
whatever she wanted for him.
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