“Uncle Tom seems terribly worried.  I have never seen him so worried even over mother, and he doesn’t seem worried about her now.  Oh, James, she is suffering frightfully, I know.”  Clemency gave a little sob.  Then Gordon’s voice was heard calling imperiously, “Elliot, come along!” James kissed the poor little face tenderly, and whispered that she must not worry, that probably the powders would relieve her mother, and then that she herself had better lie down and try to get a little sleep, and hurried out.

Gordon was seated in the buggy, waiting for him.  “I don’t want to lose any time,” he said brusquely as James got in beside him.  “Even a few minutes sometimes work awful changes in a case like this.  If he is no worse I will leave you with him, and make a call on Mrs. Wells.  I haven’t seen her to-day, and yesterday it looked like pneumonia, then there is that child with diphtheria at the Atwaters’.  I ought to go there myself, but if he is worse you will have to go, and to a few others, and I must stay with him.”

Gordon drove furiously.  Heads appeared at windows; people on the street turned faces of wonder and alarm after him.  It was soon noised about Alton that there had been a terrible accident, that somebody was at the point of death, but of that Gordon and James knew nothing.

When they arrived at the hotel, Gordon, after he had tied his horse, took his medicine-case, and, followed by James, entered, and went directly upstairs to a large room at the back of the hotel.  This room was somewhat isolated in position, having a corridor on one side and linen closets on another, it being a corner apartment with two outer walls.  Gordon opened the door softly and entered with James behind him.  The bed stood between the two west windows.  It was a northwest room.  The afternoon sun had not yet reached it.  It was furnished after the usual fashion of country hotel bedrooms.  It was clean and sparse, and the furniture had the air of having a past, of having witnessed almost everything which occurs to humanity.  It seemed battered and stained, though not with wear, but with humanity.  The old-fashioned black walnut bedstead in which the sick man lay seemed to have a thousand voices of experiences.  A great piece was broken off one corner of the footboard.  The wound in the wood looked sinister.  Directly opposite the bed stood the black walnut bureau, with its swung glass.  The glass was cracked diagonally, and reflected the bed and its occupant with an air of experience.  Gordon went directly to his patient.  Beside him sat Georgie K. He looked at the two doctors and shook his head gravely.  His great blond face was unshaven and paled with watching.  Nobody spoke a word.  All three looked at the man in the bed, who lay either asleep, or feigning sleep, or in a stupor.  Gordon felt for his pulse softly, with keen eyes upon his face.  This face was unspeakably ghastly.  The throat was swathed in bandages.  There was one tiny spot of red on the white of the linen.  The man’s eyes were rolled upward.  Around an abrasion on the cheek, which glistened oily with some unguent which had been applied to it, was a circle of painful red clearly defined from the pallor of the rest of the cheek.