"By mighty!" ejaculated Captain Eri in astonishment. "Well, Jerry, I'll
be switched if you ain't right down brilliant once in a while. Of course
we will. He can have the spare room. Why didn't I think of that, I
wonder?"

And so John Baxter, who had not paid a visit in his native village since
his wife died, came at last to his friend's home to pay what seemed
likely to be a final one. They carried him up the stairs to the spare
room, as dismal and cheerless as spare rooms in the country generally
are, undressed him as tenderly as their rough hands would allow, robed
him in one of Captain Jerry's nightshirts--the buttons that fastened
it had been sewed on by the Captain himself, and were all sizes and
colors--and laid him in the big corded bedstead. The Doctor hastened
away to procure his medicine case. Ralph Hazeltine, having been
profusely thanked for his services and promising to call the next day,
went back to the station, and the three captains sat down by the bedside
to watch and wait.

Captain Eri was too much perturbed to talk, but the other two, although
sympathetically sorry for the sufferer, were bursting with excitement
and curiosity.

"Well, if THIS ain't been a night!" exclaimed Captain Jerry. "Seem's if
everything happened at once. Fust that darky and then the fire and then
this. Don't it beat all?

"Eri," said Captain Perez anxiously, "was John layin' jest the same way
when you found him as he was when we come?"

"Right in the same place," was the answer.