utside was striving to enter. I am not
fanciful, but just then the notion came across me that if that door
opened we should see the grim skeleton, Death, on the threshold, with
his bleached, unclad bones dripping with the storm. I laughed at the
ghastly fancy, and told it to Tardif in one of his waking intervals, but
he was so terrified and troubled by it that it grew to have some little
importance in my own eyes. So the night wore slowly away, the tall clock
in the corner ticking out the seconds and striking the hours with a
fidelity to its duty, which helped to keep me awake. Twice or thrice I
crept, with quite unnecessary caution, into the room of my patient.

No, there was no symptom of sleep there. The pulse grew more rapid, the
temples throbbed, and the fever gained ground. Mother Renouf was ready
to weep with vexation. The girl herself sobbed and shuddered at the loud
sounds of the tempest without; but yet, by a firm, supreme effort of her
will, which was exhausting her strength dangerously, she kept herself
quite still. I would have given up a year or two of my life to be able
to set her free from the bondage of my own command.

CHAPTER THE FIFTH.

LOCKS OF HAIR.

The westerly gale, rising every few hours into a squall, gave me no
chance of leaving Sark the next day, nor for some days afterward; but I
was not at all put out by my captivity. All my interest--my whole
being, in fact--was absorbed in the care of this girl, stranger as she
was. I thought and moved, lived and breathed, only to fight step by step
against delirium and death, and to fight without my accustomed weapons.
Sometimes I could do nothing but watch the onset and inroads of the
fever most helplessly. There was no possibility of aid. The stormy
waters which beat against that little rock in the sea came swelling and
rolling in from the vast plain of the Atlantic, and broke in tempestuous
surf against the island. The wind howled, and the rain and hail beat
across us almost incessantly for two days, and Tardif himself was kept a
prisoner in the house, except when he went to look after his live-stock.
No doubt it would have been practicable for me to get as far as the
hotel, but to what good? It would be quite deserted, for there were no
visitors to Sark at this season, and I did not give it a second thought.
I was entirely engrossed in my patient, and I learned for the first time
what their task is who hour after hour watch the progress o