d bitingly cold, a chill dampness
that struck the heart. The man's strangled breathing came from a
corner of the room. The doctor spoke, but there was no answer. He
hastily struck a match and looked around. The little flickering light
showed a rickety table, an old stove red with rust, and a dark object
in a far corner. It showed, also, a lantern on the floor. Gilbert lit
it, and going to the corner, bent over the sick man. John McIntyre lay
stretched on a low straw bed, covered with a ragged quilt and a heap of
nondescript clothing. His breath was coming in choking gasps, and he
gazed up at his visitor with staring, but unseeing, eyes. The doctor
felt his burning forehead and his leaping pulse, and uttered a sharp
exclamation. John McIntyre was sick, so sick that relief must come
speedily or it would not come at all.

Gilbert was wide awake now. The weary man was lost in the alert
physician. He forced some medicine down the man's throat, found some
kindling-wood in the shed, and soon had a blazing fire and a boiling
kettle. Then he flung aside his cap and coat and went rummaging in the
meager cupboard; he must have something--anything--for poultices. He
gave a relieved whistle as he stumbled upon a can of linseed meal, and
reflected, with some amusement, upon how approvingly Mrs. Winters would
have regarded the homely treatment. When he had adjusted the hot
poultice he ran out and led his shivering horse around into the shelter
of the old shed behind the house. Then he hurried back to John
McIntyre's bedside and took up his night's work. A hard battle he knew
it would be, with, as yet, almost even chances for life and death. He
went into the struggle eagerly, with not only the strong desire to
relieve pain and save life, which is part of the true physician, but
with his fighting instinct keenly aroused. The battle was on; there
was only his strength and skill against the dread specter, and he was
determined to win.

All night long he hung over his patient, watchful, careful, seizing
every smallest vantage ground, swiftly changing his tactics when he
sighted defeat ahead. Once or twice he sank into the single chair the
place possessed and snatched a few minutes' sleep; but when the instant
came to administer medicine or change the poultices, he was wide awake
again. So completely was he absorbed in his task that he lost all
consciousness of time and place, until he noticed a sickly appearance
in t