That such men and women are fools, is and has been so widely believed, that, to men of the stamp of my indignant reader, it has become a fact! But the end alone will reveal the beginning.

Such a fool was Prometheus, with the vulture at his heart--but greater than Jupiter with his gods around him.
There soon came a change, however, and the lessons ceased altogether.
Tom had come down to his old quarters, and, in the arrogance of convalescence, had presumed on his imagined strength, and so caught cold.

An alarming relapse was the consequence, and there was no more playing; for now his condition began to draw to a change, of which, for some time, none of them had even thought, the patient had seemed so certainly recovering.

The cold settled on his lungs, and he sank rapidly.
Joseph, whose violin was useless now, was not the less in attendance.
Every evening, when his work was over, he came knocking gently at the door of the parlor, and never left until Tom was settled for the night.
The most silently helpful, undemonstrative being he was, that doctor could desire to wait upon patient.

When it was his turn to watch, he never closed an eye, but at daybreak--for it was now spring--would rouse Mary, and go off straight to his work, nor taste food until the hour for the mid-day meal arrived.
Tom speedily became aware that his days were numbered--phrase of unbelief, for are they not numbered from the beginning?
Are our hairs numbered, and our days forgotten--till death gives a hint to the doctor?
He was sorry for his past life, and thoroughly ashamed of much of it, saying in all honesty he would rather die than fall for one solitary week into the old ways--not that he wished to die, for, with the confidence of youth, he did not believe he could fall into the old ways again.