“Hold the wire.”

Portlaw held it for a few minutes, then: 

“Mr. Portlaw?”—­scarcely audible.

“Is that you, Mrs. Malcourt?”

“Yes....  Is Mr. Hamil going to die?”

“We don’t know, Mrs. Malcourt.  We are doing all we can.  It came suddenly; we were caught unprepared—­”

“Suddenly, you say?”

“Yes, it hit him like a bullet.  He ought to have broken the journey northward; he was not well when he arrived, but I never for a moment thought—­”

“Mr. Portlaw—­please!”

“Yes?”

“Is there a chance for him?”

“The doctors refuse to say so.”

“Do they say there is no chance?”

“They haven’t said that, Mrs. Malcourt.  I think—­”

“Please, Mr. Portlaw!”

“Yes, madam!”

“Will you listen very carefully, please?”

“Certainly—­”

“Mr. Malcourt and I are leaving on the 10.20.  You will please consult your time-table and keep us informed at the following stations—­have you a pencil to write them down?...  Are you ready now?  Ossining, Hudson, Albany, Fonda, and Pride’s Fall....  Thank you....  Mr. Malcourt wishes you to send the Morgan horses....  If there is any change in Mr. Hamil’s condition before the train leaves the Grand Central at 10.20, let me know.  I will be at the telephone station until the last moment.  Telegrams for the train should be directed to me aboard “The Seminole”—­the private car of Mr. Cardross....  Is all this clear?...  Thank you.”

With a confused idea that he was being ordered about too frequently of late Portlaw waddled off bedward; but sleep eluded him; he lay there watching through his window the light in the window of the sick-room where Hamil lay fighting for breath; and sometimes he quivered all over in scared foreboding, and sometimes the thought that Malcourt was returning seemed to ease for a moment the dread load of responsibility that was already playing the mischief with his digestion.

A curry had started it; a midnight golden-buck superimposed upon a miniature mince pie had, to his grief and indignation, continued an outrageous conspiracy against his liver begun by the shock of Hamil’s illness.  But what completed his exasperation was the indifference of the physicians attending Hamil who did not seem to appreciate the gravity of an impaired digestive system, or comprehend that a man who couldn’t enjoy eating might as well be in Hamil’s condition; and Portlaw angrily swallowed the calomel so indifferently shoved toward him and hunted up Wayward, to whom he aired his deeply injured feelings.

“What you need are ‘Drover’s Remedies,’” observed Wayward, peering at him through his spectacles; and Portlaw unsuspiciously made a memorandum of the famous live-stock and kennel panacea for future personal emergencies.

The weather was unfavourable for Hamil; a raw, wet wind rattled the windows; the east lowered thick and gray with hurrying clouds; volleys of chilly rain swept across the clearing from time to time.