alled inside. That
would be the end. A sickening feeling of terror gripped him and his
heart pounded in his chest.

He took a step toward the door, which was really an involuntary
movement. No, he couldn't go in there. The doctor was in a chair at the
bedside, watching, helpless. He would only look up and say again that
there was nothing to do but wait.

For a moment he hated that doctor because he sat there without doing a
thing. His brain, inflamed and racked by the strain, throbbed in his
head. He had a distorted idea that the doctor was making a coldly
scientific observation of his father's death, perhaps taking mental
notes for a paper to be read to a class of medical students.

He had tried waiting inside. That Mrs. Sprockett from across the street,
who was with his mother, had whispered to him to be brave. His mother
sat very still in her rocking chair, her head bowed, her hand pressed
to her eyes. He knew she was praying. Unable to hold himself, he had
dropped at her feet and buried his head in her lap. He had cried
brokenly, his shoulders heaving spasmodically, and he had felt her hand
gently touching his head.

They had not spoken, but the feeling that she was suffering with him had
assuaged his agony until that Mrs. Sprockett had touched him on the
shoulder and spoken to him.

"Do be brave, John, you must be a man now," she had said, and he had
rushed outside to begin his pacing, back and forth, back and forth.

He began his walking again, ten steps across and ten steps back. At
first he strode furiously, almost running, uttering queer little sounds
like a whimpering animal, tears streaming down his cheeks. Now his
throat was swollen and dry and his eyes smarted.

A few doors down the street children shouted at some wild game. Suddenly
they stopped and he knew that they had been told to be quiet. He thought
he saw their frightened faces as they were told that Mr. Gallant was
dying. He remembered how he had been shocked to dumbness years before
when someone in the neighborhood had died.

A boy passed on the sidewalk and looked at him with widened eyes and
gaping mouth. He hurried by as though he feared that death might steal
out from the Gallant house and take him.

Somewhere across the street a phonograph started blaring out a jazz
piece. Then it stopped as suddenly as the shouts of the children. A lot
they cared, he thought. All his father's death meant to them was the
irritation of stopping the p