"No, only getting a little tired out. I hope the worst is over now, and I think I shall hold out."
He went about from room to room, and from bed to bed, attentive and sympathetic as ever, and then left the house. A half hour later, one of the men came into the kitchen where Mrs. Gatchell was stirring something over the fire.
"Got a spare bed?" he asked, laconically.
The widow looked up.
"'Cause we've got another patient."
"Who is it?" she asked, quickly.
"Come and see."
She followed the man to the rear of the house, where, upon a stone which had fallen from the wall, Dr. Horton was sitting, his head bent in slumber. She listened a moment to his heavy breathing, laid her hand upon his forehead, and turned silently away.
A bed was made ready, and the young doctor, still wrapped in the heavy sleep of disease, was laid upon it, and one of the men was sent for Dr. Starkey.
In the delirium which marks the first stages of the disease, young Horton would allow no one but Lilly O'Connell to minister to him. Sometimes he imagined himself a boy, and called her "mother," clinging to her hand, and moaning if she made the least effort to withdraw. At other times, another face haunted him, and another name, coupled with endearing words or tender reproaches, fell from the half-unconscious lips.