"Where is his father? The child can't live. It is one of the worst cases
of croup I have had this year, why didn't you send for me sooner? Where
is his father? It is now just twelve o'clock, time for all respectable
men to be in the house," said the bluff but kind hearted family doctor
looking tenderly upon Jeanette's little boy who lay gasping for breath
in the last stages of croup.

"Oh! I don't know," said Jeanette her face crimsoning beneath the
doctor's searching glance. "I suppose he is down to Anderson's."

"Anderson's!" said the doctor in a tone of hearty indignation, "what
business has he there, and his child dying here?"

"But doctor, he didn't know, the child had fever when he went out, but
neither of us thought much of it till I was awakened by his strange and
unnatural breathing. I sent for you as soon as I could rouse the
servants." "Well rouse them again, and tell them to go down to
Anderson's and tell your husband that his child is dying."

"Oh! no not dying doctor, you surely don't mean it." "Yes Jeanette,"
said the old family doctor, tenderly and sadly, "I can do nothing for
him, let me take him in my arms and rest you. Dear little darling, he
will be saved from the evils to come."

Just as his life was trembling on its frailest chords, and its delicate
machinery almost wound up, Charles Romaine returned, sober enough to
take in the situation. He strode up to the dying child, took the clammy
hands in his, and said in a tone of bitter anguish, "Charlie, don't you
know papa? Wouldn't you speak one little word to papa?" But it was too
late, the shadows that never deceive flitted over the pale beauty of the