pped her sewing.

'Eh, dear!' she cried, 'is that lad o' mine in mischief again? I do hope
he's no limb brokken.'

'It in'na that,' said the old man, 'but he's dazed-like. Better lay him
on th' squab.'

She calmly took Tommy and placed him gently down on the check-covered
sofa under the window. 'Come in, father, do.'

The man obeyed, astonished at the entire friendliness of this daughter,
whom, though he had frequently seen her, he had never spoken to for more
than ten years. Her manner, at once filial and quite natural, perfectly
ignored the long breach, and disclosed no trace of animosity.

Father and daughter examined the unconscious child. Pale, pulseless,
cold, he lay on the sofa like a corpse except for the short, faint
breaths which he drew through his blue lips.

'I doubt I've killed him,' said Eli.

'Nay, nay, father!' And her face actually smiled. This supremacy of the
soul against years of continued misfortune lifted her high above him,
and he suddenly felt himself an inferior creature.

'I'll go for th' doctor,' he said.

'Nay! I shall need ye.' And she put her head out of the window. 'Mrs.
Walley, will ye let your Lucy run quick for th' club doctor? my Tommy's
hurt.'

The whole street awoke instantly from its nap, and in a few moments
every door was occupied. Miriam closed her own door softly, as though
she might wake the boy, and spoke in whispers to people through the
window, finally telling them to go away. When the doctor came, half an
hour afterwards, she had done all that she knew for Tommy, without the
slightest apparent result.

'What is it?' asked the doctor curtly, as he lifted the child's thin and
lifeless hand.

Eli Machin explained that he had boxed the boy's ear.

'Tommy was impudent to his grandfather,' Miriam added hastily.

'Which ear?' the doctor inquired. It was the left. He gazed into it,
and then raised the boy's right leg and arm. 'There is no paralysis,' he
said. Then he felt the heart, and then took out his stethoscope and
applied it, listening intently.

'Canst hear owt?' the old man said.

'I cannot,' he answered.

'Don't say that, doctor--don't say that! said Miriam, with an accent of
appeal.

'In these cases it is almost impossible to tell whether the patient is
alive or dead. We must wait. Mrs. Baddeley, make a mustard plaster for
his feet, and we will put another over the heart.' And so they waited
one hour, while the clock ticked and the mustard plaster