and always discussed at the supper-table the events
of the day, but this time he took no notice of her remark. He pushed
away his cold meat with an expression of disgust.

'You don't seem up to the mark to-night, Jimmy,' said Mrs Clinton.

'I served on a jury to-day in place of the governor, and it gave me
rather a turn.'

'Why, was there anything particular?'

Mr Clinton crumbled up his bread, rolling it about on the table.

'Only some poor things starved to death.'

Mrs Clinton shrugged her shoulders. 'Why couldn't they go to the
workhouse, I wonder? I've no patience with people like that.'

Mr Clinton looked at her for a moment, then rose from the table. 'Well,
dear, I think I'll get to bed; I daresay I shall be all right in the
morning.'

'That's right,' said Mrs Clinton; 'you get to bed and I'll bring you
something 'ot. I expect you've got a bit of a chill and a good
perspiration'll do you a world of good.'

She mixed bad whisky with harmless water, and stood over her husband
while he patiently drank the boiling mixture. Then she piled a couple of
extra blankets on him and went down stairs to have her usual nip,
'Scotch and cold,' before going to bed herself.

All night Mr Clinton tossed from side to side; the heat was unbearable,
and he threw off the clothes. His restlessness became so great that he
got out of bed and walked up and down the room--a pathetically
ridiculous object in his flannel nightshirt, from which his thin legs
protruded grotesquely. Going back to bed, he fell into an uneasy sleep;
but waking or sleeping, he had before his eyes the faces of the three
horrible bodies he had seen at the mortuary. He could not blot out the
image of the thin, baby face with the pale, open eyes, the white face
drawn and thin, hideous in its starved, dead shapelessness. And he saw
the drawn, wrinkled face of the old man, with the stubbly beard; looking
at it, he felt the long pain of hunger, the agony of the hopeless
morrow. But he shuddered with terror at the thought of the drowned girl
with the sunken eyes, the horrible discolouration of putrefaction; and
Mr Clinton buried his face in his pillow, sobbing, sobbing very silently
so as not to wake his wife....

The morning came at last and found him feverish and parched, unable to
move. Mrs Clinton sent for the doctor, a slow, cautious Scotchman, in
whose wisdom Mrs Clinton implicitly relied, since he always agreed with
her own idea of her children's ailme