ear-soaked eyes fixed on
little Tod's face. Her teeth chattered as she spoke and her arms were
tight pressed against her sides, her fingers opening and shutting in
her agony. Now and then in her nervousness she would wipe her forehead
with the back of her wrist as if it were wet, or press her two fingers
deep into her swollen cheek.

Fogarty had followed close behind the doctor and now stood looking down
at the crib with fixed eyes, his thin lips close shut, his square jaw
sunk in the collar of his shirt. There were no dangers that the sea
could unfold which this silent surfman had not met and conquered, and
would again. Every fisherman on the coast knew Fogarty's pluck and
skill, and many of them owed their lives to him. To-night, before this
invisible power slowly closing about his child he was as powerless as a
skiff without oars caught in the swirl of a Barnegat tide.

"Why didn't you let me know sooner, Fogarty? You understood my
directions?" Doctor John asked in a surprised tone. "You shouldn't have
left him without letting me know." It was only when his orders were
disobeyed and life endangered that he spoke thus.

The fisherman turned his head and was about to reply when the wife
stepped in front of him.

"My husband got ketched in the inlet, sir," she said in an apologetic
tone, as if to excuse his absence. "The tide set ag'in him and he had
hard pullin' makin' the p'int. It cuts in turrible there, you know,
doctor. Tod seemed to be all right when he left him this mornin'. I had
husband's mate take the note I wrote ye. Mate said nobody was at home
and he laid it under your pipe. He thought ye'd sure find it there when
ye come in."

Doctor John was not listening to her explanations; he was leaning over
the rude crib, his ear to the child's breast. Regaining his position,
he smoothed the curls tenderly from the forehead of the little fellow,
who still lay with eyes closed, one stout brown hand and arm clear of
the coverlet, and stood watching his breathing. Every now and then a
spasm of pain would cross the child's face; the chubby hand would open
convulsively and a muffled cry escape him. Doctor John watched his
breathing for some minutes, laid his hand again on the child's
forehead, and rose from the stool.

"Start up that fire, Fogarty," he said in a crisp tone, turning up his
shirt-cuffs, slipping off his evening coat, and handing the garment to
the wife, who hung it mechanically over a chair, her eyes