Also, his hands trembled much, and he began to lose flesh. All this
troubled me, for his own sake as well as my own, and I resolved to ask
him to see the doctor of the next mail-steamer that came. With this
idea I went one day to the end of the Point, and found him in his usual
attitude, seated on the long grass, looking seaward. He did not hear me
approach, and when I spoke he started to his feet, and demanded fiercely
why I disturbed him. I replied, as mildly as I could, for I was rather
afraid of the glittering look that was in his eyes, that I wished to ask
him if he did not feel ill.
He regarded me with a steady but softened glance for a little, and then
said:
"My lad, I thank you for your trouble; but I want no doctor. Do you
think I'm looking ill?"
"Indeed you are," I answered, "ill and thin; and, do you know, I hear
you talk to yourself in your sleep nearly every night."
"What do I say?" he asked eagerly.
"That I cannot tell," I replied. "It is all rambling talk; the same
things over and over again, and nearly all about one person--Lucy."
"Boy!" he cried out, as if in pain, or as if something had touched him
to the quick, "sit you down, and I'll tell you why I think of her--she
was my wife.
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