en noble and strong. But the next moment his eye fell upon the
shoulder and arm that lay nearest to him, and the little bundle, swathed
in flannel, that it clasped to her breast. His brow grew dark as
he gazed. The sleeping woman moved. Perhaps it was an instinctive
consciousness of his presence; perhaps it was only the current of
cold air from the opened door: but she shuddered slightly, and, still
unconscious, drew the child as if away from HIM, and nearer to her
breast. The shamed blood rushed to Rand's face; and saying half aloud,
"I'm not going to take your precious babe away from you," he turned in
half-boyish pettishness away. Nevertheless he came back again shortly to
the bedside, and gazed upon them both. She certainly did look altogether
more ladylike, and less aggressive, lying there so still: sickness, that
cheap refining process of some natures, was not unbecoming to her. But
this bundle! A boyish curiosity, stronger than even his strong objection
to the whole episode, was steadily impelling him to lift the blanket
from it. "I suppose she'd waken if I did," said Rand; "but I'd like to
know what right the doctor had to wrap it up in my best flannel shirt."
This fresh grievance, the fruit of his curiosity, sent him away again to
meditate on the ledge. After a few moments he returned again, opened the
cupboard at the foot of the bed softly, took thence a piece of chalk,
and scrawled in large letters upon the door of the cupboard, "If you
want anything, sing out: I'm just outside.--RAND." This done, he took a
blanket and bear-skin from the corner, and walked to the door. But here
he paused, looked back at the inscription (evidently not satisfied with
it), returned, took up the chalk, added a line, but rubbed it out
again, repeated this operation a few times until he produced the polite
postscript,--"Hope you'll be better soon." Then he retreated to the
ledge, spread the bear-skin beside the door, and, rolling himself in
a blanket, lit his pipe for his night-long vigil. But Rand, although
a martyr, a philosopher, and a moralist, was young. In less than ten
minutes the pipe dropped from his lips, and he was asleep.

He awoke with a strange sense of heat and suffocation, and with
difficulty shook off his covering. Rubbing his eyes, he discovered that
an extra blanket had in some mysterious way been added in the night; and
beneath his head was a pillow he had no recollection of placing there
when he went to sleep.