Thus equipped, he began with no depressing circumstances, except his mother's words, that if by the first of September he had not decided what he should like to do, she should decide for him. He went out of town, as usual, in the hot weeks; he fished, and climbed hills, and got lost, as usual; but through it all, he thought and read of the Colonial Policy, and wondered whether he should have fallen in love with a Quaker girl, and whether the troubles between England and Ireland arose from a need of Republican government. In spite of his ramblings, and in spite of some discouraged moods, some unexamined idea always urged him on, and the result was that in two months he had prepared rough sketches of his work, and his parents were, this time, convinced of his earnestness.
Coming home the very evening of the first day of September, the day and the hour he had dreaded as the last of his liberty, because as he had not made up his mind, it was to be made up for him, he saw two men lifting his father out of a carriage. He stopped and looked at them. He had no power to speak or help. He saw them carry his father up-stairs and lay him on the bed. Then, at a word from his mother, he went for a doctor. He never could recall the manner of his errand, but the physician came; at last some one said to him:
"It is a slight shock of paralysis. If another does not follow, he will soon get well." This was like saying to him, "If your father does not die, he'll live."
How long was he to wait for that knowledge! An hour would be a year and a year would be a century. He helped in all things as he was told to do; but his fingers were like thumbs and his feet like clubs. He felt a singular and confusing sense of identity with his father, as though the paralysis had included him.
By and by, the room grew quiet. He and his mother were left alone; he would have given anything if he had dared to speak or touch her. Nothing was near him. Had he ever been a boy? Was there a prize essay? Were there only three people in the world--his father, his mother and himself?
Later came his uncle. His mother then called him by name for the first time in those terrible hours, and bade him bid his father good-night. As he went mechanically to do so, his father seemed to keep Hal's hand in his own numb fingers, and to look most imploringly, the mother's hand on to Harry's. The mother, as the hands met, said, "Hal will take care of me, dear," and Hal exclaimed, "I will." Then they knew they were right in their interpretation as the sick face brightened and the eyelids slowly closed in weariness.