"You must stop," he said, quietly. "You will not last long unless you do."
"How long!" demanded the General, quite calmly.
"Oh! I cannot say that. Perhaps, a year--perhaps, less. You have burned your candle too fast." He glanced at the other's unmoved face. "You need change. You ought to go South this winter."
"I should only change my skies and not my thoughts," said the General, his memory swinging back to the past.
The doctor gazed at him curiously. "What is the use of putting out your eyes and working yourself to death when you have everything that money can give?"
"I have nothing! I work to forget that," snarled the General, fiercely.
The General thought over the doctor's advice and finally followed it, though not for the reason the physician supposed.
Something led him to select the place where his son had gone and where his body lay amid the magnolias. If he was going to die, he would carry out a plan which he had formed in the lonely hours when he lay awake between the strokes of the clock. He would go and see that his son's grave was cared for, and if he could, would bring him back home at last. Doubtless, "that woman's" consent could be bought. She had possibly married again. He hoped she had.
Christmas is always the saddest of seasons to a lonely man, and General Hampden, when he landed in that old Southern town on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, would not have been lonelier in a desert. The signs of Christmas preparation and the sounds of Christmas cheer but made him lonelier. For years, flying from the Furies, he had immersed himself in work and so, in part, had forgotten his troubles; but the removal of this prop let him fall flat to the earth.
As soon as the old fellow had gotten settled in his room at the hotel he paid a visit to his son's grave, piloted to the cemetery by a friendly and garrulous old negro hackman, who talked much about Christmas and "the holidays."
"Yes, suh, dat he had known Cap'n Ham'n. He used to drive him out long as he could drive out. He had been at his funeral. He knew Mrs. Ham'n, too. She sutney is a fine lady," he wound up in sincere eulogy.
He was nearer to his son than he had ever been since the day he last saw him in all the pride and beauty of a gallant young soldier.