The family physician came and called an expert in counsel, and then Brooke was directed to send for a nurse,—more than one her mother would not have, and as she was intelligently calm, no objection was made to her insistence that she should share both the care and responsibility of the night. Adam Lawton was unconscious, and life itself must hang in the balance for many hours at best, and the physicians insisted upon the most perfect quiet. Who can say where the mind is when its physical registry is interrupted? The physician cannot tell you, but at the same time he is very careful to keep injurious impression beyond the range of the seemingly deaf ears. Brooke went to her father’s den and touched the instrument that had so recently fallen from his hand, almost with a shudder. If only it would repeat to her what it had said to him, some light would be shed upon the mystery. After arranging for the nurse, a desire for companionship during this night of suspense seized her, and she called the number that meant Lucy Dean, thinking as she did so, “I must tell her as quickly as I can, for I cannot bear her usual telephone joking now.” “Lucy? It is I, Brooke Lawton; can you come down and spend the night with me? Please listen until I finish. Something awful has happened—father—” Lucy (breaking in with a torrent of words): “Yes, you poor dear, I know all about it; heard it just as soon as I got home, before dinner—dad told me. We would have been down by now, only dad thought, as your father had gone against his advice through all this matter, it might seem pushing in me. Cheer up, it may come out all right yet.” Brooke: “I don’t understand; how could you have heard before dinner?—it was eight o’clock before we knew ourselves.” “Dad was worried over the affair and had a special sent him after he came up town.” “Lucy, what are you talking about?” “Why, what else but your father’s great deal to buy up the stock control of the T. Y. D. Q. Railroad, and the way those rascally friends of his turned traitor? It isn’t so killing, after all. Dad was down perfectly flat twelve years ago, and now he’s ten times to the good. What dad thought foolish was for him to realize on everything else he had to go into this shaky deal!” “You mean that my father has failed! Then that accounts, oh, that accounts for it all!”