“Oh, he’s been failing this long time,” said the girl; “it’s the long hours of the trams he’s dying of. There’s never any rest for them you see, sir; winter and summer, Sunday and week-day they have to drudge on. He’s a kind husband and a good father too, and he will go on working for the sake of keeping the home together, but it’s little of the home he sees when he has to be away from it sixteen hours every day. They say they’re going to give more holidays and shorter hours, but there’s a long time spent in talking of things, it seems to me, and in the meanwhile John’s dying.” Frithiof remembered how Sigrid had mentioned this very thing to him in the summer when he had told her of his disgrace; he had been too full of his own affairs to heed her much, but now his heart grew hot at the thought of this pitiable waste of human life, this grinding out of a larger dividend at the cost of such terrible suffering. It was a sign that his new life had actually begun when, instead of merely railing at the injustice of the world, he began to think what he himself could do in this matter. “Perhaps they will want the doctor fetched. I will come with you to the door and you shall just see,” he said. And the girl thanking him, knocked at her sister’s door, spoke to some one inside, and returning, asked him to come in. To his surprise he found Sigrid in the little kitchen; she was walking to and fro with the baby, a sturdy little fellow of a year old. “You are back at last,” she said, “I was getting quite anxious about you. Mr. Hallifield was taken so much worse to-day, and hearing the baby crying I came in to help.” “How about the doctor? Do they want him fetched?” “No, he came here about ten o’clock, and he says there is nothing to be done; it is only a question of hours now.” At this moment the poor wife came into the kitchen; she was still quite young, and the dumb anguish in her face brought the tears to Sigrid’s eyes. “What, Clara!” she exclaimed, perceiving her sister, “you back again!” “I was too late,” said the girl, “and they had locked me out. But it’s no matter now that the gentleman has let me in here. Is John worse again.” “He’ll not last long,” said the wife, “and he be that set on getting in here to the fire, for he’s mortal cold. But I doubt if he’s strength to walk so far.” “Frithiof, you could help him in,” said Sigrid. “Will you, sir? I’ll thank you kindly if you will,” said Mrs. Hallifield, leading the way to the bedroom. Frithiof followed her, and glancing toward the bed could hardly control the awed surprise which seized him as for the first time he saw a man upon whom the shadow of death had already fallen. Once or twice he had met Hallifield in the passage setting off to his work in the early morning, and he contrasted his recollection of the brisk, fair-complexioned, respectable-looking conductor, and this man propped up with pillows, his face drawn with pain, and of that ghastly ashen hue which is death’s herald.