all the time
searching Doctor John's face for some gleam of hope.

"Now get a pan," he continued, "fill it with water and some corn-meal,
and get me some cotton cloth--half an apron, piece of an old petticoat,
anything, but be quick about it."

The woman, glad of something to do, hastened to obey. Somehow, the
tones of his voice had put new courage into her heart. Fogarty threw a
heap of driftwood on the smouldering fire and filled the kettle; the
dry splinters crackled into a blaze.

The noise aroused the child.

The doctor held up his finger for silence and again caressed the boy's
forehead. Fogarty, with a fresh look of alarm in his face, tiptoed back
of the crib and stood behind the restless sufferer. Under the doctor's
touch the child once more became quiet.

"Is he bad off?" the wife murmured when the doctor moved to the fire
and began stirring the mush she was preparing. "The other one went this
way; we can't lose him. You won't lose him, will ye, doctor, dear? I
don't want to live if this one goes. Please, doctor--"

The doctor looked into the wife's eyes, blurred with tears, and laid
his hand tenderly on her shoulder.

"Keep a good heart, wife," he said; "we'll pull him through. Tod is a
tough little chap with plenty of fight in him yet. I've seen them much
worse. It will soon be over; don't worry."

Mrs. Fogarty's eyes brightened and even the fisherman's grim face
relaxed. Silent men in grave crises suffer most; the habit of their
lives precludes the giving out of words that soothe and heal; when
others speak them, they sink into their thirsty souls like drops of
rain after a long drought. It was just such timely expressions as these
that helped Doctor John's patients most--often their only hope hung on
some word uttered with a buoyancy of spirit that for a moment stifled
all their anxieties.

The effect of the treatment began to tell upon the little sufferer--his
breathing became less difficult, the spasms less frequent. The doctor
whispered the change to the wife, sitting close at his elbow, his
impassive face brightening as he spoke; there was an oven chance now
for the boy's life.

The vigil continued.

No one moved except Fogarty, who would now and then tiptoe quickly to
the hearth, add a fresh log to the embers, and as quickly move back to
his position behind the child's crib. The rising and falling of the
blaze, keeping rhythm, as it were, to the hopes and fears of the group,
lighted up