ministered
hypodermically the second dose of brandy. Campbell, unable to bear the
sight, had withdrawn to the adjoining room, where he could be heard
pacing the floor. From time to time he came back for a moment,
whispering:

"Will she live, nurse? Will she live? Shall we pull her through?"

"I don't know," Lloyd told him. "I don't know. Wait. Go back. I will let
you know."

Another fifteen minutes passed. Lloyd fancied that the heart's action
was growing a little stronger. A great stillness had settled over the
house. The two servants waiting Lloyd's orders in the hall outside the
door refrained even from whispering. From the next room came the muffled
sound of pacing footsteps, hurried, irregular, while with that strange
perversity which seizes upon the senses at moments when they are more
than usually acute Lloyd began to be aware of a vague, unwonted movement
in the City itself, outside there behind the drawn curtains and
half-opened window--a faint, uncertain agitation, a trouble, a passing
ripple on the still black pool of the night, coming and going, and
coming again, each time a little more insistent, each time claiming a
little more attention and notice. It was about half past three o'clock.
But the little patient's temperature was rising--there could be no doubt
about that. The lungs expanded wider and deeper. Hattie's breathing was
unmistakably easier; and as Lloyd put her fingers to the wrist she could
hardly keep back a little exultant cry as she felt the pulse throbbing
fuller, a little slower, a little more regularly. Now she redoubled her
attention. Her hold upon the little life shut tighter; her power of
resistance, her strength of purpose, seemed to be suddenly quadrupled.
She could imagine the Enemy drawing off; she could think that the grip
of cold fingers was loosening.

Slowly the crisis passed off, slowly the reaction began. Hattie was
still unconscious, but there was a new look upon her face--a look that
Lloyd had learned to know from long experience, an intangible and most
illusive expression, nothing, something, the sign that only those who
are trained to search for it may see and appreciate--the earliest faint
flicker after the passing of the shadow.

"Will she live, will she live, nurse?" came Mr. Campbell's whisper at
her shoulder.

"I think--I am almost sure--but we must not be too certain yet. Still
there's a chance; yes, there's a chance."

Campbell, suddenly gone white, put out