Do call him; I can't make him
hear."

Jerome opened his mouth to shout, but the sick man flew at him with
an awful, piteous cry. "Don't ye, don't ye," he wailed out; "I tell
ye not to, J'rome Edwards. I 'ain't got any money to pay him with."

"But you're sick, Henry," said Jerome, putting his hand on the man's
shaking shoulder to steady him. "You'd better let me run after him--I
can make him hear now. It won't cost much."

"Don't ye do it," almost sobbed the young farmer. "It costs us a
dollar every time he comes so far, an' he'll say right off, the way
he did about mother that last time she was sick--when she broke her
hip--that he'd take up a little piece of land beforehand; it would
jest pay his bill. He'll do that, an' I tell ye I 'ain't got 'nough
land now to support me. I 'ain't got 'nough land now, J'rome."

The poor young wife was weeping almost like a child. "Do let him call
the doctor, do let him, Henry," she pleaded.

"There's another thing, J'rome," half whispered the young man,
turning his back on his wife and fastening mysterious bright eyes on
Jerome's--"there's another thing. Laura, she'll have to have the
doctor before long, you can see that, an'--there'll be another mouth
to fill, an' I've been savin' up a little, an' it ain't goin' for
_me_--I tell ye it ain't goin' for _me_, J'rome."

All the while poor Henry Leeds, in spite of hot red spots on his
cheeks, was shivering violently, but stiffly, like a tree in a
freezing wind. The doctor had whirled quite out of sight over the
hill. "He's gone," wailed the wife--"he's gone, and Henry 'll
die--oh, I know he'll die!"

Then Jerome, who had been standing bewildered, not knowing whether he
should or should not run and call after the doctor, and listening
first to one, then to the other, collected himself. "No, he isn't
going to die, either," he said to the poor girl, who was very young;
and he said it quite sharply, because he so pitied her in her
innocent helplessness, and would give her courage even in a bitter
dose. He asked her, furthermore, as brusquely as Doctor Prescott
himself could have done, what medicine she had in the house. Then he
bade her hasten, if she wished to help and not hurt her husband, to
the nearest neighbor and beg some sweat-producing herbs--thoroughwort
or sage or catnip--all of which he had heard were good for fever.

She went away, wrapped in the thick shawl which Jerome had found in a
closet, and himself pinned over