“Please hurry,” I said.  “Come with me quick.  Dr. Grant is dying, you know.  I am sure he is dying, but perhaps those things you have brought will make him well again.”

“I hope so,” answered that doctor boy, and together we ran up the path to that poor little hut that holds all the world for me, perhaps a dying world, like those I have been told are fading away in the heavens.

He wasn’t a bit out of breath, though I was panting when we reached the shack.  He cast a quick look about him, and just nodded briskly to Mr. Barnett, like a man who has no leisure for small talk.  He first went up to the little boy’s bed, and looked at the parson, enquiringly.

“He’s getting better,” said the latter.

At once the new doctor turned away and stood by John’s bed.  I must say John now, Auntie dear, just when you and I are talking together.  Perhaps it will only be for a few hours, or a day or two, that he can be John to me, in my heart and soul, for after that he may be only a memory, a killing one, as I feel now.

For a moment he stood there, immobile, looking at John, noting that awful grey color, and the rapid, hard breathing that sometimes comes in little sobs.  And then he felt the pulse, coolly, and counted the respirations, in so calm a way that I began to feel like shrieking to him to do something.  But all this really took but a very short time.  He went to the little table, on which a lamp was burning, rather dimly, and opened the package which contained all those vials they had brought from St. John’s.  Captain Sammy had just come in, and stood near the door, and he sought my eyes for some message of comfort, but I could only shake my head sadly.

“This lamp gives a very poor light,” said Dr. Johnson.

At once the old man leaped out and sprinted towards the nearest neighbor’s.  There he dashed in, seized the lamp around which the family sat at their evening meal, and rushed out again, leaving them in total darkness.  Of course it went out in the wind and had to be lighted again, and I noticed that the young doctor gave a calm, curious glance at me, and Frenchy, and that his eyes swiftly took in all of the poor, sordid, little place.

I stood in a corner, out of the way, for now it seemed to me that I was of very little moment.  This man was going to do everything that really mattered, and I would only sit by the bed, afterwards, and watch, and try and do things to help.

Dr. Johnson filled a syringe with the antitoxine and injected the stuff in Dr. Grant’s arm, which looked awfully white, and then he turned to me.

“You need not stay any longer, Miss Jelliffe,” he said, civilly.  “I shall watch him all night.”

“You are not going to drive me away?” I cried.

Then he looked at me again, curiously, and there was a tiny little nod of his head, as if he had just understood something, after which he took the poor little chair and pushed it near the bed.