uickly, but calmly, out; told his wife to wait; and
followed Phoebe up-stairs. She told him in a few agitated words how Dick
had been taken, and all the symptoms; especially what had alarmed her
so, his springing off the bed when the spasm came.

Dr. Staines told her to hold the patient up. He lost not a moment, but
opened his mouth resolutely, and looked down.

"The glottis is swollen," said he: then he felt his hands, and said,
with the grave, terrible calm of experience, "He is dying."

"Oh, no! no! Oh, doctor, save him! save him!"

"Nothing can save him, unless we had a surgeon on the spot. Yes, I might
save him, if you have the courage: opening his windpipe before the next
spasm is his one chance."

"Open his windpipe! Oh, doctor! It will kill him. Let me look at you."

She looked hard in his face. It gave her confidence.

"Is it the only chance?"

"The only one: and it is flying while we chatter."

"DO IT."

He whipped out his lancet.

"But I can't look on it. I trust to you and my Saviour's mercy."

She fell on her knees, and bowed her head in prayer.

Staines seized a basin, put it by the bedside, made an incision in
the windpipe, and got Dick down on his stomach, with his face over the
bedside. Some blood ran, but not much. "Now!" he cried, cheerfully, "a
small bellows! There's one in your parlor. Run."

Phoebe ran for it, and at Dr. Staines' direction lifted Dick a little,
while the bellows, duly cleansed, were gently applied to the aperture
in the windpipe, and the action of the lungs delicately aided by this
primitive but effectual means.

He showed Phoebe how to do it, tore a leaf out of his pocket-book, wrote
a hasty direction to an able surgeon near, and sent his wife off with it
in the carriage.

Phoebe and he never left the patient till the surgeon came with all the
instruments required; amongst the rest, with a big, tortuous pair of
nippers, with which he could reach the glottis, and snip it. But they
consulted, and thought it wiser to continue the surer method; and so
a little tube was neatly inserted into Dick's windpipe, and his throat
bandaged; and by this aperture he did his breathing for some little
time.

Phoebe nursed him like a mother; and the terror and the joy did her
good, and made her less desolate.

Dick was only just well when both of them were summoned to the farm,
and arrived only just in time to receive their father's blessing and his
last sigh.

Their elder b