ew that Sissy
had come in and had squatted on the floor with Bep and Fom, playing
dolls, probably. Yet she felt that numb, gradual, terrifying enlargement
of her fingertips, of her limbs, of her tongue, her body, her head, that
she had been told again and again was mere fancy. With a self-control
that was unlike her, an unnatural product of her unnatural state, she
locked her jaws together that she might not scream this once. And in the
eery stillness that followed the effort, which had made her ears buzz
and her temples throb, she heard quite sanely Florence's denial of some
charge her twin had brought against her.

"I didn't do any such thing," she whispered.

"You did," said Bep.

"I didn't."

"Cross your heart to die?"

The scream burst from Irene then--not the cry of delirium, but a sharp,
terrified, if inarticulate, call for help. If there was one thing Split
did respect, it was that Reaper whose name she could never hear without
a quick indrawn breath. Yet--in her heart--she knew that, though others
might fall at the touch of that fearful scythe, she, Split Madigan, as
fleet of limb as a coyote and as sound of heart as a young pine-cone,
could never, never die; that the world could never be when her quick red
blood should be quiet and her mountain-bred lungs should be stilled.

With a bound Sissy pushed the twins out of the door. She was at the
bedside when Miss Madigan entered.

"Go outside, Sissy!" she commanded. "Can't you see you're exciting her?
Isn't it hard enough for me to take care of her when she's so cross?
She's not to be excited. She's to be kept quiet. There, there,
Irene--it's only fancy, I tell you! Look at your fingers; they're
thinner, littler than they ever were. Look at Sissy's; see how much
bigger they are."

Irene lifted her fingers that had caught Sissy's. She looked from her
own fevered hand to Sissy's dimpled one and was comforted. But her hold
on her old enemy did not relax. She had something tangible now to
reassure her; something that spoke to her in her own language. Her eyes
closed, her tense little hand dropped wearily, but she held Sissy fast.

When she thought her patient was asleep, Miss Madigan tried to open her
fingers, but, with something of her old waywardness, Irene resisted. And
Sissy, with an old-fashioned nod of advice, motioned her aunt to let
things be. She curled herself up on a corner of the bed, and--it being
quite safe, no other Madigan being present but