bout Tom,
you bet Tom's goin' to do somethin'."

In the confusion that followed Tom heard himself saying:

"All right boys, come along and name yer drinks."

Tom had a very indistinct memory of what followed. He remembered having
a handful of silver, and of trying to put it in his pocket.

Once when the boys were standing in front of the bar at his invitation
he noticed a miserable, hungry looking man, who drank greedily. It was
Skinner. Then someone took him by the arm and said something about his
having enough, and Tom felt himself being led across a floor that rose
and fell strangely, to a black lounge that tried to slide away from him
and then came back suddenly and hit him.

The wind raged and howled with increasing violence around the granary
where Arthur lay tossing upon his hard bed. It seized the door and
rattled it in wanton playfulness, as if to deceive the sick man with
the hope that a friend's hand was on the latch, and then raced
blustering and screaming down to the meadows below. The fanning mill
and piles of grain bags made fantastic shadows on the wall in the
lantern's dim light, and seemed to his distorted fancy like dark and
terrible spectres waiting to spring upon him.

Pearl knelt down beside him, tenderly bathing his burning face.

"Why do you do all this for me, Pearl?" he asked slowly, his voice
coming thick and painfully.

She changed the cloth on his head before replying.

"Oh, I keep thinkin' it might be Teddy or Jimmy or maybe wee Danny,"
she replied gently, "and besides, there's Thursa."

The young man opened his eyes and smiled bravely.

"Yes, there's Thursa," he said simply.

Pearl kept the fire burning in the kitchen--the doctor might need hot
water. She remembered that he had needed sheets too, and carbolic acid,
when he had operated on her father the winter before.

Arthur did not speak much as the night wore on, and Pearl began to grow
drowsy in spite of all her efforts. She brought the old dog into the
granary with her for company. The wind rattled the mud chinking in the
walls and drove showers of dust and gravel against the little window.
She had put the lantern behind the fanning mill, so that its light
would not shine in Arthur's eyes, and in the semi-darkness, she and old
Nap waited and listened. The dog soon laid his head upon her knee and
slept, and Pearl was left alone to watch. Surely the doctor would come
soon...it was a good thing she had the dog...he was so