els might care for a wandering soul. But the big
man in the bed tossed and muttered, and looked at Jean appealingly, and
grew worse. The strength seemed going from him at last--from him, the
bulwark of us all.

All that science could do was done. All that care could do was done,
but our giant weakened. The doctors talk of the croupous form of
pneumonia, and of some other form--I do not know the difference--but I
do know that this man had a great pain in his chest, and that his head
ached, and that he had alternate arctic chills and flames of fever.
His pulse was rapid, and he gasped as he breathed. Sometimes he would
become delirious, then weaker in the sane intervals. He would send us
from the room then, and call for Jean alone, and, when she
emerged--well--God help me!--I never want to see that awful look of
suspense and agony upon a human face again. It will stay with me until
I follow the roadway leading to my friends.

The doctor gave the sick man opiates or stimulants, as the case might
at any moment seem to need, and they had some slight effect; but there
came a shallower breathing, and the quilts tossed under the heaving of
the broad chest, fitfully. It reminded me in some strange way of the
imitation sea scenes at the theater, where a great cloth of some sort
is rocked and lifted to represent the waves. Only one lung was
congested in the beginning, but, later, the thing extended to each, and
the air-cells began filling, and the man suffered more and more. He
fought against it fiercely.

"Grant," said the doctor, after the administration of some strong
stimulant, "help us all you can. Cough! Force the air through those
huge lungs of yours, and see if you can't tear away that tissue which
is forming to throttle you!"

And Grant would summon all his strength, by no means yet exhausted, and
exert his will, and cough, despite the fearful pain of it; but the
human form held not the machinery to dislodge that growing web which
was filling the lung-chambers and cutting off, hour by hour, the oxygen
which makes pure blood and makes the being.

And the man who laughed at things grew weaker and weaker, and, though
he laughed still and was his old self and made us happy for a brief
interval, when he had not the fever and was clear-headed, and said that
it was nothing and that he would throw it off, we knew that there was
deadly peril. And one evening, when Grant was again delirious, the
doctor came to me