"Frank, Frank, don't you know me?" asked Sir Thomas, in a voice of keen distress.
"Know you? No; I never saw you before. Where's Juniper? Come here, old fellow. You're a regular trump, and no mistake. Give us some brandy. That's the right sort of stuff; ain't it, old gentleman?" said Frank, glaring at his father, and uttering a wild laugh.
"This is terrible, terrible!" groaned the baronet. "Doctor, what can we do?"
"We must keep him as quiet as possible," he replied; "but it's a bad case. He's a bad subject, unhappily, because of his intemperate habits. I hope we shall reduce the fever; but what I fear most is the after exhaustion."
"Oh!" exclaimed Lady Oldfield, "if he would only know us--if he would only speak rationally--if he would only keep from these dreadful ramblings about spirits and drinking! It breaks my heart to hear him speak as he does. Oh! I could bear to lose him now, though we have just found him, if I could only feel that he was coming back, like the poor prodigal, in penitence to his heavenly Father."
"You must calm yourself, madam," said the doctor; "we must hope that it will be so. Remember, he is not responsible for the words he now utters; they are only the ravings of delirium."
"Yes; _he_ is not responsible for the words he now utters," cried the poor mother--"but oh, misery, misery! I am responsible. _I_ held him back, _I_ laughed him from his purpose, when he would have pledged himself to renounce that drink which has been his bane and ruin, body and soul."
"Come, come, my dearest wife," said her husband, "you must be comforted. You acted for the best. We are not responsible for his excess. He never learned excess from us."
"No; but I cannot be comforted, for I see--I know that he might now have been otherwise. Ay, he might now have been as the Oliphants are, if his own mother had not put the fatal hindrance in his way. Oh, if I had worlds to give I would give them, could I only undo that miserable past!"
"I think," said the medical man, "it will be wiser if all would now leave him except the nurse. The fewer he sees, and the fewer voices he hears, the less he will be likely to excite himself. I will call early again to-morrow."
Lady Oldfield retired to her chamber, and poured out her heart in prayer. Oh, might she have but one hour of intelligence--one hour in which she might point her erring child to that loving Saviour, whom she had herself sought in earnest and found in truth since the departure of her son from home! Oh, might she but see him return to the Gatherer of the wandering sheep! She did not ask life for him--she dared not ask it absolutely; but she did ask that her heavenly Father would in pity grant her some token that there was hope in her beloved child's death, if he must die. And does not God answer prayer? Yes, alway; but not always in our way. When sin has found the sinner out--when warnings have been slighted, mercies despised, the Spirit quenched, the gentle arm that would guide us to glory rudely and perseveringly flung aside--then, then, it may be, not even a believing mother's prayer shall avail to turn aside the righteous stroke of the hand of that holy God who is to his determined enemies a consuming fire.
