“See!” she whispered to Aleck, touching his shoulder lightly, “he is looking at us.”  When Aleck looked up James was indeed looking at them with large, serious, half-focussed eyes.  It was as if he were coming back from another world where the laws of vision were different, and he was only partially adjusted to the present conditions.  He moved his hands feebly under the bedclothes, where they were being warmed by the freestone, and then tried to moisten his lips.  Agatha took a glass of water from the table, looked about for a napkin, but, seeing none, wet the tips of her fingers and placed them gently over James’s lips.  His eyes followed her at first, but closed for an instant as she came near.  When they opened again, they looked more natural.  As he felt the comfort of the water on his lips, his features relaxed, and a look of recognition illumined his face.  His eyes moved from Agatha to Aleck, who was now bending over him, and back to Agatha.  The look was a salute, happy and peaceful.  Then his eyes closed again.

For an hour Agatha and Aleck kept their watch, almost fearing to breathe.  Doctor Thayer worked, gave quiet orders, tested the heartbeats, let no movement or symptom go unnoticed.  For a time James kept even the doctor in doubt whether he was slipping into the Great Unknown or into a deep and convalescent sleep.  By the end of the hour, however, Jimsy had decided for natural sleep, urged thereto, perhaps, by that unseen playwright who had decreed another time for the curtain; or perhaps he was kept by Doctor Thayer’s professional persuasions, in defiance of the prompter’s signal.  However the case, the heart slowly but surely began to take up its job like an honest force-pump, the face began to lose its death-like pallor, the breathing became more nearly normal.  Doctor Thayer, with Mrs. Stoddard quiet and efficient at his elbow, worked and tested and worked again, and finally sat moveless for some minutes, watch in hand, counting the pulsations of James’s heart.  At the end of the time he laid the hand carefully back under the clothes, put his watch in his pocket, and finally got up and looked around the room.

Mrs. Stoddard was pouring something into a measuring glass.  Agatha was standing by the window, looking out into the blue night; and Aleck could be seen through the half-open door, pacing up and down the hall.  Doctor Thayer turned to his sister.

“Give him his medicine on the half-hour, and then you go to bed.  That man Hand will do now.”  Then he went to the door and addressed Aleck.  “Well, Mr. Van Camp, unless something unexpected turns up, I think your cousin will live to jump overboard again.”