t with the hurry and anxiety and one thing and another, I'll
warm up the beef-tea for my supper. There's not a blessed thing in the
house; for you don't eat nothing, Mrs. Halliday; and as to cooking a
dinner for Mr. Sheldon, you'd a deal better go and throw your victuals
out into the gutter, for then there'd be a chance of stray dogs
profiting by 'em, at any rate."

"Phil is off his feed, then; eh, Nancy?" said George.

"I should rather think he is, Mr. George. I roasted a chicken yesterday
for him and Mrs. Halliday, and I don't think they eat an ounce between,
them; and such a lovely tender young thing as it was too--done to a
turn--with bread sauce and a little bit of sea-kale. One invalid makes
another, that's certain. I never saw your brother so upset as he is
now, Mr. George, in all his life.

"No?" answered George Sheldon thoughtfully; "Phil isn't generally one
of your sensitive sort."

The invalid was sleeping heavily during this conversation. George stood
by the bed for some minutes looking down at the altered face, and then
turned to leave the room.

"Good night, Mrs. Halliday," he said; "I hope I shall find poor old Tom
a shade better when I look round to-morrow."

"I am sure I hope so," Georgy answered mournfully.

She was sitting by the window looking out at the darkening western sky,
in which the last lurid glimmer of a stormy sunset was fading against a
background of iron gray.

This quiet figure by the window, the stormy sky, and ragged hurrying
clouds without, the dusky chamber with all its dismally significant
litter of medicine-bottles, made a gloomy picture--a picture which the
man who looked upon it carried in his mind for many years after that
night.

George Sheldon and Nancy Woolper left the room together, the
Yorkshirewoman carrying a tray of empty phials and glasses, and amongst
them the cup of beef-tea.

"He seems in a bad way to-night, Nancy," said George, with a backward
jerk of his head towards the sick-chamber.

"He is in a bad way, Mr. George," answered the woman gravely, "let Mr.
Philip think what he will. I don't want to say a word against your
brother's knowledge, for such a steady studious gentleman as he is had
need be clever; and if I was ill myself, I'd trust my life to him
freely; for I have heard Barlingford folks say that my master's advice
is as good as any regular doctor's, and that there's very little your
regular doctors know that he doesn't know as well or bette