e said. "At three o'clock, when the trouble began, I
was over at Mrs. Albright's,--I had left Virgie with the baby. When I
came back, she and all the other servants had gone. They had heard that
the white people were going to kill all the negroes, and fled to seek
safety. I found Dodie lying in a draught, before an open window, gasping
for breath. I ran back to Mrs. Albright's,--I had found her much better
to-day,--and she let her nurse come over. The nurse says that Dodie is
threatened with membranous croup."

"Have you sent for Dr. Price?"

"There was no one to send,--the servants were gone, and the nurse was
afraid to venture out into the street. I telephoned for Dr. Price, and
found that he was out of town; that he had gone up the river this
morning to attend a patient, and would not be back until to-morrow. Mrs.
Price thought that he had anticipated some kind of trouble in the town
to-day, and had preferred to be where he could not be called upon to
assume any responsibility."

"I suppose you tried Dr. Ashe?"

"I could not get him, nor any one else, after that first call. The
telephone service is disorganized on account of the riot. We need
medicine and ice. The drugstores are all closed on account of the riot,
and for the same reason we couldn't get any ice."

Major Carteret stood beside the brass bedstead upon which his child was
lying,--his only child, around whose curly head clustered all his hopes;
upon whom all his life for the past year had been centred. He stooped
over the bed, beside which the nurse had stationed herself. She was
wiping the child's face, which was red and swollen and covered with
moisture, the nostrils working rapidly, and the little patient vainly
endeavoring at intervals to cough up the obstruction to his breathing.

"Is it serious?" he inquired anxiously. He had always thought of the
croup as a childish ailment, that yielded readily to proper treatment;
but the child's evident distress impressed him with sudden fear.

"Dangerous," replied the young woman laconically. "You came none too
soon. If a doctor isn't got at once, the child will die,--and it must
be a good doctor."

"Whom can I call?" he asked. "You know them all, I suppose. Dr. Price,
our family physician, is out of town."

"Dr. Ashe has charge of his cases when he is away," replied the nurse.
"If you can't find him, try Dr. Hooper. The child is growing worse every
minute. On your way back you'd better get some ice, i