eak aloud. Caleb's finger had swung toward the door in a gesture
unmistakable. Allison turned, and, ghastly of face, met the eyes of
his daughter.

"Barbara," he appealed to her, frantically. "Baby----"

But she shrank, a huddled heap of misery, away from him.

"You--too?" she whispered. "You!" And then, dully: "And you're my
father!"

The shoulders beneath the garish plaid rose and fell, pitifully. This,
then, was the moment which he feared. He gulped aloud and hung his
head, and turned his feet toward home. Barbara rose after he had gone
and crept into a chair.

One after another they tried to persuade the girl to rest. Miriam came
and talked to her, and Caleb; and even Miss Sarah, passing through the
room, stopped to urge her again to go to bed. But she met them all
with the same wordless refusal; she was waiting for him when the
doctor, descending in the morning, tried to combine, diplomatically,
praise for what she had done with disapproval of her obstinacy.

"My dear child, this insubordination will help no one," he said, "and
it may end in your collapse at just the moment when you are needed
most."

"Will he live?" was all she would say. "Will he live?"

And before such hopelessness the doctor could not lie.

"He is hard hit and very, very weak," he had to admit. "The shock is
great and the tissue damage--unpromising. It is far worse than I
expected, but he is still alive, and most men would have been already
dead. And his vitality is a marvel, even to me."

He might have comforted her, but with no other statement could he have
told the truth. He failed also in his effort to persuade her to go to
bed; he had breakfast with Caleb, and she refused to eat. And she was
still there in her chair, asking only to be let alone, when Garry
Devereau and Fat Joe arrived. She rose and ran to meet the latter, but
the doctor who knew how many such situations the pudgy riverman had
weathered, summoned him immediately, and Barbara had to wait an hour
before Joe came back downstairs. By the lapels of his coat she clung
to him then.

"He's mighty sick," reluctantly Joe, too, told the truth.

"The doctor said that it was worse than he expected," she droned.
"They sent me away, but if he isn't going to live I won't let them keep
me from him!"

Joe's sympathy was unspoiled by professionalism.

"Sick is one thing,"--his confidence was almost convincing,--"and dyin'
is another. And---- Shucks! I ai