“Nothing can save him, unless we had a surgeon on the spot. Yes, I might save him, if you have the courage: opening his windpipe before the next spasm is his one chance.” “Open his windpipe! Oh, doctor! It will kill him. Let me look at you.” She looked hard in his face. It gave her confidence. “Is it the only chance?” “The only one: and it is flying while we chatter.” “DO IT.” He whipped out his lancet. “But I can't look on it. I trust to you and my Saviour's mercy.” She fell on her knees, and bowed her head in prayer. Staines seized a basin, put it by the bedside, made an incision in the windpipe, and got Dick down on his stomach, with his face over the bedside. Some blood ran, but not much. “Now!” he cried, cheerfully, “a small bellows! There's one in your parlor. Run.” Phoebe ran for it, and at Dr. Staines' direction lifted Dick a little, while the bellows, duly cleansed, were gently applied to the aperture in the windpipe, and the action of the lungs delicately aided by this primitive but effectual means. He showed Phoebe how to do it, tore a leaf out of his pocket-book, wrote a hasty direction to an able surgeon near, and sent his wife off with it in the carriage. Phoebe and he never left the patient till the surgeon came with all the instruments required; amongst the rest, with a big, tortuous pair of nippers, with which he could reach the glottis, and snip it. But they consulted, and thought it wiser to continue the surer method; and so a little tube was neatly inserted into Dick's windpipe, and his throat bandaged; and by this aperture he did his breathing for some little time. Phoebe nursed him like a mother; and the terror and the joy did her good, and made her less desolate. Dick was only just well when both of them were summoned to the farm, and arrived only just in time to receive their father's blessing and his last sigh. Their elder brother, a married man, inherited the farm, and was executor. Phoebe and Dick were left fifteen hundred pounds apiece, on condition of their leaving England and going to Natal. They knew directly what that meant. Phoebe was to be parted from a bad man, and Dick was to comfort her for the loss. When this part of the will was read to Phoebe, she turned faint, and only her health and bodily vigor kept her from swooning right away. But she yielded. “It is the will of the dead,” said she, “and I will obey it; for, oh, if I had but listened to him more when he was alive to advise me, I should not sit here now, sick at heart and dry-eyed, when I ought to be thinking only of the good friend that is gone.” When she had come to this she became feverishly anxious to be gone. She busied herself in purchasing agricultural machines, and stores, and even stock; and to see her pinching the beasts' ribs to find their condition, and parrying all attempts to cheat her, you would never have believed she could be a love-sick woman.