A Story by a Physician 'THE exact time? Good God! my friend, why do you insist? One would think--but what does it matter;it is easily bedtime--isn't that near enough? But, here, if you must set your watch, take mine and see for yourself.'
With that he detached his watch--a tremen-dously heavy, old-fashioned one--from the chain, and handed it to me; then turned away, and walking across the room to a shelf of books, began an exam-ination of their backs. His agitation and evident distress surprised me; they appeared reasonless.
Having set my watch by his I stepped over to where he stood and said, 'Thank you.'
As he took his timepiece and reattached it to the guard I observed that his hands were unsteady.
With a tact upon which I greatly prided myself, I sauntered carelessly to the sideboard and took some brandy and water; then, begging his pardon for my thoughtlessness, asked him to have some and went back to my seat by the fire, leaving him to help himself, as was our custom. He did so and presently joined me at the hearth, as tranquil as ever.
This odd little incident occurred in my apartment, where John Bartine was passing an evening. We had dined together at the club, had come home in a cab and--in short, everything had been done in the most prosaic way; and why John Bartine should break in upon the natural and established order of things to make himself spectacular with a display of emotion, apparently for his own entertainment, I could nowise understand. The more I thought of it, while his brilliant conversational gifts were commending themselves to my inattention, the more curious I grew, and of course had no difficulty in persuading myself that my curiosity was friendly solicitude. That is the disguise that curiosity usually assumes to evade resentment. So I ruined one of the finest sentences of his disregarded monologue by cutting it short without ceremony.
'John Bartine,' I said, 'you must try to forgive me if I am wrong, but with the light that I have at present I cannot concede your right to go all to pieces when asked the time o' night. I cannot admit that it is proper to experience a mysterious reluc-tance to look your own watch in the face and to cherish in my presence, without explanation, painful emotions which are denied to me, and which are none of my business.'
To this ridiculous speech Bartine made no imme-diate reply, but sat looking gravely into the fire.
Fearing that I had offended I was about to apolo-gize and beg him to think no more about the mat-ter, when looking me calmly in the eyes he said:
'My dear fellow, the levity of your manner does not at all disguise the hideous impudence of your demand; but happily I had already de-cided to tell you what you wish to know, and no manifestation of your unworthiness to hear it shall alter my decision. Be good enough to give me your attention and you shall hear all about the matter.
'This watch,' he said, 'had been in my family for three generations before it fell to me. Its original owner, for whom it was made, was my great-grand-father, Bramwell Olcott Bartine, a wealthy planter of Colonial Virginia, and as staunch a Tory as ever lay awake nights contriving new kinds of maledic-tions for the head of Mr. Washington, and new methods of aiding and abetting good King George.
One day this worthy gentleman had the deep misfor-tune to perform for his cause a service of capital im-portance which was not recognized as legitimate by those who suffered its disadvantages. It does not mat-ter what it was, but among its minor consequences was my excellent ancestor's arrest one night in his own house by a party of Mr. Washington's rebels. He was permitted to say farewell to his weeping family, and was then marched away into the darkness which swallowed him up for ever. Not the slenderest clue to his fate was ever found. After the war the most diligent inquiry and the offer of large rewards failed to turn up any of his captors or any fact concerning his disappearance. He had disappeared, and that was all.'
Something in Bartine's manner that was not in his words--I hardly knew what it was--prompted me to ask:
'What is your view of the matter--of the justice of it?'
'My view of it,' he flamed out, bringing his clenched hand down upon the table as if he had been in a public house dicing with blackguards--'my view of it is that it was a characteristically dastardly assassination by that damned traitor, Washington, and his ragamuffin rebels!'
For some minutes nothing was said: Bartine was recovering his temper, and I waited. Then I said:
'Was that all?'
'No--there was something else. A few weeks after my great-grandfather's arrest his watch was found lying on the porch at the front door of his dwelling. It was wrapped in a sheet of letter-paper bearing the name of Rupert Bartine, his only son, my grandfather. I am wearing that watch.'
Bartine paused. His usually restless black eyes were staring fixedly into the grate, a point of red light in each, reflected from the glowing coals. He seemed to have forgotten me. A sudden threshing of the branches of a tree outside one of the windows, and almost at the same instant a rattle of rain against the glass, recalled him to a sense of his sur-roundings. A storm had risen, heralded by a single gust of wind, and in a few moments the steady plash of the water on the pavement was distinctly heard. I hardly know why I relate this incident; it seemed somehow to have a certain significance and relevancy which I am unable now to discern. It at least added an element of seriousness, almost solem-nity. Bartine resumed:
