me with his own eyes. "I must ha' forgot about mother's bein' gone," he apologized sheepishly.
I took advantage of this lucid interval to try to give him some medicine the doctor had left. "Take a swallow of this," I said, holding the glass to his lips.
"What's it for?" he asked.
"It's a heart stimulant," I explained. "The doctor said if we could get you through to-night you have a good chance."
His face drew together in grotesque lines of anxiety. "Little Frank worse?"
"Oh, no, he's doing finely."
"Susie all right?"
"Why, yes," I said wonderingly.
"Nothing the matter with her other boy?"
"Why, no, no," I told him. "Everybody's all right. Here, just take this down."
He turned away his head on the pillow and murmured something I did not catch. When I asked him what he said, he smiled feebly as in deprecation of his well-known ridiculous ways. "I'm just as much obliged to you," he said, "but if everybody's all right, I guess I won't have any medicine." He looked at me earnestly. "I'm—I'm real tired," he said.
It came out in one great breath apparently his last, for he did not move after that, and his ugly, slack-mouthed face was at once quite still. Its expression made me think of the time I had seen it as a child, by lantern-light, as he looked down at the new-born lamb on his breast.
