At one o’clock he was seized with a kind of spasm in the throat that lasted so long it nearly choked him.

Then Phoebe got frightened, and sent to the nearest surgeon.  He did not hurry, and poor Dick had another frightful spasm just as he came in.

“It is hysterical,” said the surgeon.  “No disease of the heart, is there?  Give him a little sal-volatile every half hour.”

In spite of the sal-volatile these terrible spasms seized him every half hour; and now he used to spring off the bed with a cry of terror when they came; and each one left him weaker and weaker; he had to be carried back by the women.

A sad, sickening fear seized on Phoebe.  She left Dick with the maid, and tying on her bonnet in a moment, rushed wildly down the street, asking the neighbors for a great doctor, the best that could be had for money.  One sent her east a mile, another west, and she was almost distracted, when who should drive up but Dr. and Mrs. Staines, to make purchases.  She did not know his name, but she knew he was a doctor.  She ran to the window, and cried, “Oh, doctor, my brother!  Oh, pray come to him.  Oh! oh!”

Dr. Staines got quickly, but calmly, out; told his wife to wait; and followed Phoebe up-stairs.  She told him in a few agitated words how Dick had been taken, and all the symptoms; especially what had alarmed her so, his springing off the bed when the spasm came.

Dr. Staines told her to hold the patient up.  He lost not a moment, but opened his mouth resolutely, and looked down.

“The glottis is swollen,” said he:  then he felt his hands, and said, with the grave, terrible calm of experience, “He is dying.”

“Oh, no! no!  Oh, doctor, save him! save him!”

“Nothing can save him, unless we had a surgeon on the spot.  Yes, I might save him, if you have the courage:  opening his windpipe before the next spasm is his one chance.”

“Open his windpipe!  Oh, doctor!  It will kill him.  Let me look at you.”

She looked hard in his face.  It gave her confidence.

“Is it the only chance?”

“The only one:  and it is flying while we chatter.”

“Do it.”

He whipped out his lancet.

“But I can’t look on it.  I trust to you and my Saviour’s mercy.”

She fell on her knees, and bowed her head in prayer.

Staines seized a basin, put it by the bedside, made an incision in the windpipe, and got Dick down on his stomach, with his face over the bedside.  Some blood ran, but not much.  “Now!” he cried, cheerfully, “a small bellows!  There’s one in your parlor.  Run.”

Phoebe ran for it, and at Dr. Staines’ direction lifted Dick a little, while the bellows, duly cleansed, were gently applied to the aperture in the windpipe, and the action of the lungs delicately aided by this primitive but effectual means.

He showed Phoebe how to do it, tore a leaf out of his pocket-book, wrote a hasty direction to an able surgeon near, and sent his wife off with it in the carriage.