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At this time he had reduced his dose of the drug to eight drops twice a day. With a grim courage he resolved to make it five all at once. He did so, and held to it. Medallion was much with him in these days. One morning in the spring he got up, went out in his garden, drew in the fresh, sweet air with a great gulp, picked some lovely crab-apple blossoms, and, with a strange glowing look in his eyes, came in to his wife, put them into her hands, and kissed her. It was the anniversary of their wedding-day. Then, without a word, he took from his pocket the little phial that he had carried so long, rolled it for an instant in his palm, felt its worn, discoloured cork musingly, and threw it out of the window.

“Now, my dear,” he whispered, “we will be happy again.”

He held to his determination with a stern anxiety. He took a month’s vacation, and came back better. He was not so happy as he hoped to be; yet he would not whisper to himself the reason why. He felt that something had failed him somewhere.

One day a man came riding swiftly up to his door to say that his wife’s father had met with a bad accident in his great mill. Secord told his wife. A peculiar troubled look came into his face as he glanced carefully over his instruments and through his medicine case. “God, I must do it alone!” he said.

The old man’s injury was a dangerous one: a skilful operation was necessary. As Secord stood beside the sufferer, he felt his nerves suddenly go–just as they did in the war before he first took the drug. His wife was in the next room–he could hear her; he wished she would make no sound at all. Unless this operation was performed successfully the sufferer would die–he might die anyhow. Secord tried to gather himself up to his task, but he felt it was of no use. A month later when he was more recovered physically he would be able to perform the operation, but the old man was dying now, while he stood helplessly stroking his big brown beard. He took up his pocket medicine-case, and went out where his wife was.

Excited and tearful, she started up to meet him, painfully inquiring. “Can you save him?” she said. “Oh, James, what is the matter? You are trembling.”

“It’s just this way, Lesley: my nerve is broken; I can’t perform the operation as I am, and he will die in an hour if I don’t.”

She caught him by the arm. “Can you not be strong? You have a will. Will you not try to save my father, James? Is there no way?”

“Yes, there is one way,” he said. He opened the pocket-case and took out a phial of laudanum. “This is the way. I can pull myself together with it. It will save his life.” There was a dogged look in his face.

“Well? well?” she said. “Oh, my dear father, will you not keep him here?”

A peculiar cold smile hovered about his lips. “But there is danger to me in this… and remember, he is very old!”

“Oh,” she cried, “how can you be so shocking, so cruel!” She rocked herself to and fro. “If it will save him–and you need not take it again, ever!”

“But, I tell you–“

“Do you not hear him–he is dying!” She was mad with grief; she hardly knew what she said.

Without a word he dropped the tincture swiftly in a wine-glass of water, drank it off, shivered, drew himself up with a start, gave a sigh as if some huge struggle was over, and went in to where the old man was. Three hours after he told his wife that her father was safe.

When, after a hasty kiss, she left him and went into the room of sickness, and the door closed after her, standing where she had left him he laughed a hard crackling laugh, and said between his teeth:

“An upset price!”

Then he poured out another portion of the dark tincture–the largest he had ever taken–and tossed it off. That night he might have been seen feeling about the grass in a moon-lit garden. At last he put something in his pocket with a quick, harsh chuckle of satisfaction. It was a little black bottle with a well-worn cork.