settling down beside the crib upon a stool that the wife had brushed off with her apron. 

 "'Bout sundown, sir," she answered, her tear-soaked eyes fixed on little Tod's face. Her teeth chattered as she spoke and her arms were tight pressed against her sides, her fingers opening and shutting in her agony. Now and then in her nervousness she would wipe her forehead with the back of her wrist as if it were wet, or press her two fingers deep into her swollen cheek. 

 Fogarty had followed close behind the doctor and now stood looking down at the crib with fixed eyes, his thin lips close shut, his square jaw sunk in the collar of his shirt. There were no dangers that the sea could unfold which this silent surfman had not met and conquered, and would again. Every fisherman on the coast knew Fogarty's pluck and skill, and many of them owed their lives to him. To-night, before this invisible power slowly closing about his child he was as powerless as a skiff without oars caught in the swirl of a Barnegat tide. 

 "Why didn't you let me know sooner, Fogarty? You understood my directions?" Doctor John asked in a surprised tone. "You shouldn't have left him without letting me know." It was only when his orders were disobeyed and life endangered that he spoke thus. 

 The fisherman turned his head and was about to reply when the wife stepped in front of him. 

 "My husband got ketched in the inlet, sir," she said in an apologetic tone, as if to excuse his absence. "The tide set ag'in him and he had hard pullin' makin' the p'int. It cuts in turrible there, you know, doctor. Tod seemed to be all right when he left him this mornin'. I had husband's mate take the note I wrote ye. Mate said nobody was at home and he laid it under your pipe. He thought ye'd sure find it there when ye come in." 

 Doctor John was not listening to her explanations; he was leaning over the rude crib, his ear to the child's breast. Regaining his position, he smoothed the curls tenderly from the forehead of the little fellow, who still lay with eyes closed, one stout brown hand and arm clear of the coverlet, and stood watching his breathing. Every now and then a spasm of pain would cross the child's face; the chubby hand would open convulsively and a muffled cry escape him. Doctor John watched his breathing for some minutes, laid his hand again on the child's forehead, and rose from the stool. 

 "Start up that fire, Fogarty," he said in a crisp tone, turning 

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