and many of them owed their lives to him. To-
night, before this invisible power slowly closing
about his child he was as powerless as a skiff without
oars caught in the swirl of a Barnegat tide.

"Why didn't you let me know sooner, Fogarty?
You understood my directions?" Doctor John asked
in a surprised tone. "You shouldn't have left him
without letting me know." It was only when his
orders were disobeyed and life endangered that he
spoke thus.

The fisherman turned his head and was about to
reply when the wife stepped in front of him.

"My husband got ketched in the inlet, sir," she
said in an apologetic tone, as if to excuse his absence.
"The tide set ag'in him and he had hard pullin'
makin' the p'int. It cuts in turrible there, you know,
doctor. Tod seemed to be all right when he left him
this mornin'. I had husband's mate take the note
I wrote ye. Mate said nobody was at home and he
laid it under your pipe. He thought ye'd sure find
it there when ye come in."

Doctor John was not listening to her explanations;
he was leaning over the rude crib, his ear to the
child's breast. Regaining his position, he smoothed
the curls tenderly from the forehead of the little fellow,
who still lay with eyes closed, one stout brown