nd Susan and Morgan and I have always brought him through
without much trouble. But it wasn't very long before we were dreadfully
alarmed.

"'I never saw croup like this before,' said Susan.

"As for me, I knew, when it was too late, what kind of croup it was. I
knew it was not the ordinary croup--'false croup' as doctors call
it--but the 'true croup'--and I knew that it was a deadly and dangerous
thing. And father was away and there was no doctor nearer than
Lowbridge--and we could not 'phone and neither horse nor man could get
through the drifts that night.

"Gallant little Jims put up a good fight for his life,--Susan and I
tried every remedy we could think of or find in father's books, but he
continued to grow worse. It was heart-rending to see and hear him. He
gasped so horribly for breath--the poor little soul--and his face
turned a dreadful bluish colour and had such an agonized expression,
and he kept struggling with his little hands, as if he were appealing
to us to help him somehow. I found myself thinking that the boys who
had been gassed at the front must have looked like that, and the
thought haunted me amid all my dread and misery over Jims. And all the
time the fatal membrane in his wee throat grew and thickened and he
couldn't get it up.

"Oh, I was just wild! I never realized how dear Jims was to me until
that moment. And I felt so utterly helpless."

"And then Susan gave up. 'We cannot save him! Oh, if your father was
here--look at him, the poor little fellow! I know not what to do.'

"I looked at Jims and I thought he was dying. Susan was holding him up
in his crib to give him a better chance for breath, but it didn't seem
as if he could breathe at all. My little war-baby, with his dear ways
and sweet roguish face, was choking to death before my very eyes, and I
couldn't help him. I threw down the hot poultice I had ready in
despair. Of what use was it? Jims was dying, and it was my fault--I
hadn't been careful enough!

"Just then--at eleven o'clock at night--the door bell rang. Such a
ring--it pealed all over the house above the roar of the storm. Susan
couldn't go--she dared not lay Jims down--so I rushed downstairs. In
the hall I paused just a minute--I was suddenly overcome by an absurd
dread. I thought of a weird story Gertrude had told me once. An aunt of
hers was alone in a house one night with her sick husband. She heard a
knock at the door. And when she went and opened it there was no