fresh look of alarm in his face, tiptoed back of the
crib and stood behind the restless sufferer. Under
the doctor's touch the child once more became quiet.

"Is he bad off?" the wife murmured when the
doctor moved to the fire and began stirring the mush
she was preparing. "The other one went this way;
we can't lose him. You won't lose him, will ye,
doctor, dear? I don't want to live if this one goes.
Please, doctor--"

The doctor looked into the wife's eyes, blurred
with tears, and laid his hand tenderly on her
shoulder.

"Keep a good heart, wife," he said; "we'll pull
him through. Tod is a tough little chap with plenty
of fight in him yet. I've seen them much worse. It
will soon be over; don't worry."

Mrs. Fogarty's eyes brightened and even the fisherman's
grim face relaxed. Silent men in grave crises
suffer most; the habit of their lives precludes the
giving out of words that soothe and heal; when others
speak them, they sink into their thirsty souls like drops
of rain after a long drought. It was just such timely
expressions as these that helped Doctor John's patients
most--often their only hope hung on some
word uttered with a buoyancy of spirit that for a
moment stifled all their anxieties.