vibration of the struggling lungs resounds through the man's frame.

"The pulse is even above 140. Oh! Esther, will he have to go through
that again?"

"No, David, no. See, he's asleep. Put him here. You look like a
ghost. Go right to bed. To-morrow will be a trying day. Davy is
tired out. To be sure, he must be worse when he is tired."

"Does the doctor come at all in the night?"

"Why, no, of course not. It is a chronic case now, he says. It
requires the same treatment."

The voice is soft consoling and sympathetic. The man is as tired as
Davy.

"We ought not to have had the folks here," he says.

"No," says Esther.

"I wish the stove were up," he thinks.

"I wish David were not in politics," the woman thinks.

There is in and about that chamber, then, the sleep of a tired man, the
whistling of a cold and hostile wind, such as few cities know, the
half-sleeping vigil of a troubled woman, and the increasing shrillness
of Davy's breathing.