Doctor John was not listening to her explanations; he was leaning over the rude crib, his ear to the child’s breast.  Regaining his position, he smoothed the curls tenderly from the forehead of the little fellow, who still lay with eyes closed, one stout brown hand and arm clear of the coverlet, and stood watching his breathing.  Every now and then a spasm of pain would cross the child’s face; the chubby hand would open convulsively and a muffled cry escape him.  Doctor John watched his breathing for some minutes, laid his hand again on the child’s forehead, and rose from the stool.

“Start up that fire, Fogarty,” he said in a crisp tone, turning up his shirt-cuffs, slipping off his evening coat, and handing the garment to the wife, who hung it mechanically over a chair, her eyes all the time searching Doctor John’s face for some gleam of hope.

“Now get a pan,” he continued, “fill it with water and some corn-meal, and get me some cotton cloth—­ half an apron, piece of an old petticoat, anything, but be quick about it.”

The woman, glad of something to do, hastened to obey.  Somehow, the tones of his voice had put new courage into her heart.  Fogarty threw a heap of driftwood on the smouldering fire and filled the kettle; the dry splinters crackled into a blaze.

The noise aroused the child.

The doctor held up his finger for silence and again caressed the boy’s forehead.  Fogarty, with a fresh look of alarm in his face, tiptoed back of the crib and stood behind the restless sufferer.  Under the doctor’s touch the child once more became quiet.

“Is he bad off?” the wife murmured when the doctor moved to the fire and began stirring the mush she was preparing.  “The other one went this way; we can’t lose him.  You won’t lose him, will ye, doctor, dear?  I don’t want to live if this one goes.  Please, doctor—­”

The doctor looked into the wife’s eyes, blurred with tears, and laid his hand tenderly on her shoulder.

“Keep a good heart, wife,” he said; “we’ll pull him through.  Tod is a tough little chap with plenty of fight in him yet.  I’ve seen them much worse.  It will soon be over; don’t worry.”

Mrs. Fogarty’s eyes brightened and even the fisherman’s grim face relaxed.  Silent men in grave crises suffer most; the habit of their lives precludes the giving out of words that soothe and heal; when others speak them, they sink into their thirsty souls like drops of rain after a long drought.  It was just such timely expressions as these that helped Doctor John’s patients most—­often their only hope hung on some word uttered with a buoyancy of spirit that for a moment stifled all their anxieties.

The effect of the treatment began to tell upon the little sufferer—­his breathing became less difficult, the spasms less frequent.  The doctor whispered the change to the wife, sitting close at his elbow, his impassive face brightening as he spoke; there was an oven chance now for the boy’s life.