r in the direction of
the closed door, and then rapidly lowered it almost against his son's
lips.

"She's gotten a hurt man down there," said Jerry, "she has been runnin'
wi' white clouts and bandages a' the forenight. And I'm thinkin' he's no
very wise, either--for he keeps cryin' that the deils are comin' to tak'
him!"

"What like of a man?" said Boyd Connoway.

But Jerry's quick ear caught a stirring in the room with the closed
door. He shook his head and motioned his father to get away from the
side of his low truckle bed.

When his wife entered, Boyd Connoway, with a sober and innocent face,
was untying his boot by the side of the fire. Bridget entered with a
saucepan in her hand, which, before she deigned to take any notice of
her husband, she pushed upon the red ashes in the grate.

From the "ben" room, of which the door was now open, Boyd could hear the
low moaning of a man in pain. He had tended too many sick people not to
know the delirium of fever, the pitiful lapses of sense, then again the
vague and troubled pour of words, and at the sound he started to his
feet. He was not good for much in the way of providing for a family. He
did a great many foolish, yet more useless things, but there was one
thing which he understood better than Bridget--how to nurse the sick.

He disengaged his boot and stood in his stocking feet.

"What is it?" he said, in an undertone to Bridget.

"No business of yours!" she answered, with a sudden hissing vehemence.

"I can do _that_ better than you!" he answered, for once sure of his
ground.

His wife darted at him a look of concentrated scorn.

"Get to bed!" she commanded him, declining to argue with such as he--and
but for the twinkling eyes of Jerry, which looked sympathy, Boyd would
have preferred to have joined the exiled Ephraim under the dark pent
among the coom of the peat-house.

He looked to Jerry, but Jerry was sound asleep. So was Phil. So were all
the others.

"Very well, daeaerlin'!" said Boyd Connoway to himself as his wife left
the room. "But, sorrow am I for the man down there that she will not let
me nurse. She's a woman among a thousand, is Bridget Connoway. But the
craitur will be after makin' the poor man eat his poultices, and use his
beef tay for outward application only!"

CHAPTER XVII

THE MAN "DOON-THE-HOOSE"

But Bridget Connoway, instant and authoritative as she was, could not
prevent her down-trodden husband from thinking. W