Houghton's tottering form. "Home," he gasped.
In renewed dread they bore him to his carriage, which Sam drove rapidly
away. By the time he reached his residence he was in almost a fainting
condition, and was carried to his bed. The waiter, who also acted in the
capacity of valet at times, gave the old man stimulants, as he said to the
clerk, "Go for Dr. Devoe: Sam dribe you. Bring 'im wid you quick."
The old man at last lay still, breathing heavily, and half-consciously
making an instinctive struggle for existence. The shock of his passion and
the weight of an immeasurable loss had been almost beyond endurance to a
man of his age and of his volcanic nature. His physician was soon at his
side, and, with some degree of success, put forth all his skill to rally
his exhausted patient. He at last succeeded in producing a certain degree
of lethargy, which, in benumbing the brain, brought respite from mental
agony.
The impression of Bodine and all the others with him that young Houghton
had been drowned was natural and almost inevitable. They had seen him
disappear beneath the water, and that was the last that was seen or heard.
The boatman's explanation that the young man had become entangled in the
rigging of the sunken vessel seemed the only way of accounting for the
fact that he did not rise again and strike out for his own boat. The words
of Mr. Houghton, recalling that final sentence of Bodine's, which had
destroyed George's hope and made him feel that he could not approach Ella
again, had greatly augmented the veteran's distress.
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