Phatik heard her words, and sobbed out loud: "Uncle, I was just
going home; but they dragged me back again,"

The fever rose very high, and all that night the boy was delirious.
Bishamber brought in a doctor. Phatik opened his eyes flushed with
fever, and looked up to the ceiling, and said vacantly: "Uncle, have the
holidays come yet? May I go home?"

Bishamber wiped the tears from his own eyes, and took Phatik's lean and
burning hands in his own, and sat by him through the night. The boy
began again to mutter. At last his voice became excited: "Mother," he
cried, "don't beat me like that! Mother! I am telling the truth!"

The next day Phatik became conscious for a short time. He turned his
eyes about the room, as if expecting some one to come. At last, with an
air of disappointment, his head sank back on the pillow. He turned his
face to the wall with a deep sigh.

Bishamber knew his thoughts, and, bending down his head, whispered:
"Phatik, I have sent for your mother." The day went by. The doctor
said in a troubled voice that the boy's condition was very critical.

Phatik began to cry out; "By the mark! --three fathoms. By the mark--
four fathoms. By the mark-." He had heard the sailor on the river-
steamer calling out the mark on the plumb-line. Now he was himself
plumbing an unfathomable sea.

Later in the day Phatik's mother burst into the room like a whirlwind,
and began to toss from side to side and moan and cry in a loud voice.