in the room which Miss
Sarah had always kept waiting for him. Fever strode upon him, while
the girl who had brought him home slept in complete exhaustion. At
times Steve lay quiescent, only muttering fitfully; the next moment he
called crisply for Fat Joe--he feared for his bridge--and Joe had to
exert every iron muscle to hold him down. And always he spoke
Barbara's name, with a poignant gentleness that left Miss Sarah on the
verge of collapse. But he continued to live, through that day and the
next night, even when the doctor shook his head and Fat Joe rose to go
for the girl, as he had promised he would, in the last extremity. He
continued to live, and with the coming of the second dawn suddenly he
was no longer delirious. Stephen O'Mara opened his eyes and gazed
feebly but very understandingly into the eyes of Fat Joe, who was
watching at that moment.

Joe tried to hush him, but he would talk a little.

"I know," he pronounced each word with calculated effort. "I have been
very sick, and I must not waste my strength. But I have to be clear,
first, on one point. Have I dreamed it, Joe, or--or did she bring me
home?"

With his voice alone, when all else seemed failing, Joe had kept his
friend alive. The doctor believed it; Miss Sarah knew it to be so.
And first of all Joe had to voice his thankfulness, for it was an
explosive thing.

"Didn't I tell her so?" he demanded in his whining tenor. "Didn't I
say so, all along? And I let that doctor worry _me_, just because he's
got a diploma in a frame, hanging on his wall!"

Then he answered Steve's question.

"She found you," he said. "She brought you home."

A long time the sick man lay and pondered. And finally he found it
possible to smile.

"I have not cared whether I lived or died," he said in little more than
a whisper. "All along I have seemed to know how near I was--to going
across; and I have been near to quitting--at times. For I was happier
than I'd ever dared let myself be, before--and then, with the first
shot that dropped Big Louie, I knew----" He shook his head, still
smiling vaguely. "I have not wanted to live, but I am looking at
things--more like a man now. . . . You need not worry any longer, Joe.
I'll sleep a little while, I think; and then I'll put my mind hard on
getting well, when I awake."

That marked the end of delirium, and with sleep which came almost while
he was talking, the fever began to abate. He "put his min