in the home of this stricken family.  Miller’s refusal to go with him was pure, elemental justice; he could not blame the doctor for his stand.  He was indeed conscious of a certain involuntary admiration for a man who held in his hands the power of life and death, and could use it, with strict justice, to avenge his own wrongs.  In Dr. Miller’s place he would have done the same thing.  Miller had spoken the truth,—­as he had sown, so must he reap!  He could not expect, could not ask, this father to leave his own household at such a moment.

Pressing his lips together with grim courage, and bowing mechanically, as though to Fate rather than the physician, Carteret turned and left the house.  At a rapid pace he soon reached home.  There was yet a chance for his child:  perhaps some one of the other doctors had come; perhaps, after all, the disease had taken a favorable turn,—­Evans was but a young doctor, and might have been mistaken.  Surely, with doctors all around him, his child would not be permitted to die for lack of medical attention!  He found the mother, the doctor, and the nurse still grouped, as he had left them, around the suffering child.

“How is he now?” he asked, in a voice that sounded like a groan.

“No better,” replied the doctor; “steadily growing worse.  He can go on probably for twenty minutes longer without an operation.”

“Where is the doctor?” demanded Mrs. Carteret, looking eagerly toward the door.  “You should have brought him right upstairs.  There’s not a minute to spare!  Phil, Phil, our child will die!”

Carteret’s heart swelled almost to bursting with an intense pity.  Even his own great sorrow became of secondary importance beside the grief which his wife must soon feel at the inevitable loss of her only child.  And it was his fault!  Would that he could risk his own life to spare her and to save the child!

Briefly, and as gently as might be, he stated the result of his errand.  The doctor had refused to come, for a good reason.  He could not ask him again.

Young Evans felt the logic of the situation, which Carteret had explained sufficiently.  To the nurse it was even clearer.  If she or any other woman had been in the doctor’s place, she would have given the same answer.

Mrs. Carteret did not stop to reason.  In such a crisis a mother’s heart usurps the place of intellect.  For her, at that moment, there were but two facts in all the world.  Her child lay dying.  There was within the town, and within reach, a man who could save him.  With an agonized cry she rushed wildly from the room.

Carteret sought to follow her, but she flew down the long stairs like a wild thing.  The least misstep might have precipitated her to the bottom; but ere Carteret, with a remonstrance on his lips, had scarcely reached the uppermost step, she had thrown open the front door and fled precipitately out into the night.

XXXVII