"Wake up!" cried Brodsky, tapping the forehead and either cheek.
The figure yawned and stretched itself; the eyes opened again; the little girl's face appeared like the sun from behind a veil of cloud. She stared round her in wonder.
There was a cry behind us. A figure stumbled forward, fell down before the little girl and seized her in its arms. It was the jailer's wife. She knelt there, sobbing and laughing, and stroking the little hands and face, and not paying the least attention to Brodsky or to me. Her husband, trembling with fear, sank down beside her. I saw the beads of moisture spring to his forehead and roll down his cheeks. Brodsky took me by the arm. His face was whiter than that of the dead man had been; all the vitality seemed to have gone out from him.
"Come," he said. "Our work here is at an end."
As we withdrew the father rose and came tottering up to us. He seized the doctor's hand and kissed it.
"What can I do to show you my gratitude?" he cried. "You have given me back my child from worse than death."
Brodsky turned and regarded him solemnly.
"Pray for him," he said.
"For him?" the jailer cried. "That monster?"
"No human soul is ever cast away," said Brodsky quietly. "Not even of the worst of us. So pray for his."
"He will never come back?"
"Never, save through the gates of birth," the doctor answered.
"But where was she—my little girl—when she was driven away?" he cried.
Brodsky smiled weakly.
"If I could tell you that," he answered sadly, "I should know the secrets of life and death and eternity."
NOTE—This is the first of a series of stories, each complete in itself, dealing with Dr. Ivan Brodsky, "The Surgeon of Souls."
OZYMANDIAS
BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
(Reprint)
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies; whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its scidptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
