Davy is to continue the emetic treatment.  He sits on the floor in the parlor and turns his orguinette.  “Back to Our Mountains” is his favorite air.  He has twenty-eight tunes, and he plays Verdi’s piece twenty-eight times as often as any of the others.

“Oh, Davy, you’ll kill us!” laments the housekeeper, for the little orguinette is stridulent and loud.

“He’ll kill himself,” says the cook.  “He’s not strong enough to grind that hand-organ.  He eats nothing at all, at all.”

“Papa isn’t here any more, but I take my medicine,” the child says.  The drug is weakening his stomach.

“It is the only way,” says Dr. Floddin, “to relieve his lungs.”

“Are you sure he is safe?” asks Esther.  “Are you sure it was asthma?”

“Oh, yes.  Did you not see the white foam?  That is asthma.”

“You do not come often enough, doctor.  I know Mr. Lockwin would be angry if he knew.”

“My horse will be well to-morrow and I can call twice.  But the child has passed the crisis.  You must soon give him air.  Let him play a while in the back yard.  His lungs must be accustomed to the cold of winter.”

“I presume Mr. Lockwin will take us south in December.”

“Yes, I guess he’d better.”

But Esther does not let Davy go out.  The rattle is still in the little chest.

Lockwin is home at one o’clock in the morning.  He visits Davy’s bed. 
How beautiful is the sleeping child!  “My God! if he had died!”

Lockwin is up and away at seven o’clock in the morning.  “Be careful of the boy, Esther,” he says.  “What does the doctor seem to think?”

“He gives the same medicine,” says Esther, “but Davy played his orguinette for over an hour yesterday.”

“He did!  Good!  Esther, that lifts me up.  I wish I could have heard him!”

“David, I fear that you are overtasking yourself.  Do be careful! please be careful!”

Tears come in the fine eyes of the wife.  Lockwin’s back is turned.

“Good!  Good!” he is saying.  “So Davy played!  I’ll warrant it was ‘Back to Our Mountains!’”

“Yes,” says the wife.

“Good!  Good!  That’s right.  By-bye, Esther.”

And the man goes out to victory whistling the lament of the crooning witch, “Back to Our Mountains!  Back to Our Mountains!”

“Why should Davy be so fond of that?” thinks the whistler.

But this week of campaign cannot stretch out forever.  It must end, just as Lockwin feels that another speech had killed him.  It must end with Lockwin’s nerves agog, so that when a book falls over on the shelves he starts like a deer at a shot.

It is Monday night, and there will be no speeches by the candidates.  Esther has prepared to celebrate the evening by a gathering of a half-dozen intimate friends to hear an eminent violinist, whose performances are the delight of Chicago.  The violinist is doubly eminent because he has a wife who is devoted to her husband’s renown.