the pain
and the horror and squalor of birth, and they knew that they had never
yet stood before so great a mystery.

With the first wail of the newly born infant a last convulsive shudder
passed through the frame of the unconscious mother. Then three or four
short gasps for breath, and the spirit passed away. She was dead.
Professor Biggleswade threw a corner of the sheet over her face, for he
could not bear to see it.

They washed and dried the child as any crone of a midwife would have
done, and dipped a small sponge which had always remained unused in a
cut-glass bottle in Doyne's dressing-bag in the hot milk and water of
Biggleswade's thermos bottle, and put it to his lips; and then they
wrapped him up warm in some of their own woollen undergarments, and took
him into the kitchen and placed him on a bed made of their fur coats in
front of the fire. As the last piece of fuel was exhausted they took one
of the wooden chairs and broke it up and cast it into the blaze. And
then they raised the dead man from the strip of carpet and carried him
into the bedroom and laid him reverently by the side of his dead wife,
after which they left the dead in darkness and returned to the living.
And the three grave men stood over the wisp of flesh that had been born
a male into the world. Then, their task being accomplished, reaction
came, and even Doyne, who had seen death in many lands, turned faint.
But the others, losing control of their nerves, shook like men stricken
with palsy.

Suddenly McCurdie cried in a high pitched voice, "My God! Don't you feel
it?" and clutched Doyne by the arm. An expression of terror appeared on
his iron features.

"There! It's here with us."

Little Professor Biggleswade sat on a corner of the table and wiped his
forehead.

"I heard it. I felt it. It was like the beating of wings."

"It's the fourth time," said McCurdie. "The first time was just before I
accepted the Deverills' invitation. The second in the railway carriage
this afternoon. The third on the way here. This is the fourth."

Biggleswade plucked nervously at the fringe of whisker under his jaws
and said faintly, "It's the fourth time up to now. I thought it was
fancy."

"I have felt it, too," said Doyne. "It is the Angel of Death." And he
pointed to the room where the dead man and woman lay.

"For God's sake let us get away from this," cried Biggleswade.

"And leave the child to die, like the others?" said Doyne.

"We mus