we should see the grim skeleton, Death, on the threshold, with his bleached, unclad bones dripping with the storm.  I laughed at the ghastly fancy, and told it to Tardif in one of his waking intervals, but he was so terrified and troubled by it that it grew to have some little importance in my own eyes.  So the night wore slowly away, the tall clock in the corner ticking out the seconds and striking the hours with a fidelity to its duty, which helped to keep me awake.  Twice or thrice I crept, with quite unnecessary caution, into the room of my patient.

No, there was no symptom of sleep there.  The pulse grew more rapid, the temples throbbed, and the fever gained ground.  Mother Renouf was ready to weep with vexation.  The girl herself sobbed and shuddered at the loud sounds of the tempest without; but yet, by a firm, supreme effort of her will, which was exhausting her strength dangerously, she kept herself quite still.  I would have given up a year or two of my life to be able to set her free from the bondage of my own command.

CHAPTER THE FIFTH.

LOCKS OF HAIR.

The westerly gale, rising every few hours into a squall, gave me no chance of leaving Sark the next day, nor for some days afterward; but I was not at all put out by my captivity.  All my interest—­my whole being, in fact—­was absorbed in the care of this girl, stranger as she was.  I thought and moved, lived and breathed, only to fight step by step against delirium and death, and to fight without my accustomed weapons.  Sometimes I could do nothing but watch the onset and inroads of the fever most helplessly.  There was no possibility of aid.  The stormy waters which beat against that little rock in the sea came swelling and rolling in from the vast plain of the Atlantic, and broke in tempestuous surf against the island.  The wind howled, and the rain and hail beat across us almost incessantly for two days, and Tardif himself was kept a prisoner in the house, except when he went to look after his live-stock.  No doubt it would have been practicable for me to get as far as the hotel, but to what good?  It would be quite deserted, for there were no visitors to Sark at this season, and I did not give it a second thought.  I was entirely engrossed in my patient, and I learned for the first time what their task is who hour after hour watch the progress of disease in the person, of one dear to them.

Tardif occupied himself with mending his nets, pausing frequently with his solemn eyes fixed upon the door of the girl’s room, very much as a patient mastiff watches the spot where he knows his master is near to him, though out of sight.  His mother went about her household work ploddingly, and Mother Renouf kept manfully to her post, in turn with me, as sentinel over the sickbed.  There the young girl lay whispering from morning till night, and from night till morning again—­always whispering.  The fever gained ground from hour to hour.  I had no data by which to calculate her chances of getting through it; but my hopes were very low at times.