"
At the word "doctor" I looked at him more warmly, and I
saw then what was plain enough to see but for the dim
light of the little place,--the thin flush on the cheek,
the hopeful mind, the contrast of the will to live and
the need to die, God's little irony on man, it was all
there plain enough to read. The "spell" for which the
little druggist was going is that which is written in
letters of sorrow over the sunlit desolation of Arizona
and the mountains of Colorado.
A month went by before I passed that way again. I looked
across at the little store and I read the story in its
drawn blinds and the padlock on its door.
The little druggist had gone away for a spell. And they
told me, on enquiry, that his journey had been no further
than to the cemetery behind the town where he lies now,
musing, if he still can, on the law of the survival of
the fittest in this well-adjusted world.
And they say that the shock of the addition of his whole
business to the great Pharmacy across the way scarcely
disturbed a soda siphon.
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