"I find my system must have stimulant now, and I take it medicinally."
"Oh, of course--the same old lie that’s been on people’s tongues ever since Noah invented it. It’s your business after all, only you might look on ahead a little. Not long ago you were always telling me to do so. One of these days, after I’m a poor bawling infant in arms, you’ll see purple centipedes or something just when I want your attention, and I shall get left."
The subject dropped, and I turned the conversation to a pleasanter theme. We were within a week of the race, and grandpapa, in the pink of condition, only hoped and prayed that the law would not put violent hands upon him before Henley Regatta. The complications of the position had now become impossible to describe in words. We were lodging at Henley, and already letters, signed "Verax" and "Scrutator," were appearing in the sporting papers hinting at matters mysteriously connecting the young sculler, Elisha Spratt, with the scoundrel, Daniel Dolphin. Mr. Rose was responsible for these; at least, grandpapa thought so.
But nobody interfered with him. He wound up his training, and backed himself with a thousand pounds, which was all we had left in the world. On the night before the race some policemen made an endeavour to arrest grandpapa, but he escaped, and joined me at a mean hotel near the river, where with great difficulty we succeeded in getting two adjoining bedrooms. A good night’s rest was absolutely necessary for him.
"You see, I’ve got to win the Sculls at Henley, and answer for myself at Salisbury and in the Queen’s Bench Division, and before a magistrate at Twickenham, and in three police-courts elsewhere, so I shall be fairly busy to-morrow," he said, with a rather pathetic smile. Then he kissed me, and went to bed in perfect good-temper. He was happily too young now to thoroughly realise his awful position.
I did not sleep that night for many hours, and when I finally slumbered there came to me a nightmare, involving grandpapa, which took ten years off my life.
I dreamed that the morning had come, and that I went into grandfather’s room to wish him many happy returns of the day--a thing I should certainly not have done in reality. But I was in the spirit, and never shall I forget the spectacle which greeted me as I stood by the old man’s pillow. Instead of the ruddy, healthy boy I had left over-night--instead of the muscular, deep-chested, deep-voiced young athlete who was that day to row at Henley, there sat up in the bed an uncanny, wrinkled, decrepit mummy of a creature. It was bald, save for a thin tangle of white eyebrow over each bleared eye. Its mouth was a mere slit, its nose and chin nearly met, its cheeks had fallen in. One thin skeleton of a claw held the bedclothes up to its scraggy neck. Its head shook, its under jaw dropped, its back was round as a wheel; the thing manifested indications of profoundest age.