Three quarters of an hour later the two-seated sleigh drawn by the spirited chestnut, with whose peculiarities they now knew better how to deal, reached Uncle Tom's Cabin on Lake Hanover. Peter, who was anxious to bring Frederick news of the farmer and tell him he had not developed fever, drove Miss Burns out. They were amazed at the condition in which they found things, and, as they mounted the stairs, freely exchanged criticisms without lowering their voices. The door to Frederick's room was slightly ajar. They walked in. He was lying stretched on his bed, still wearing the fur coat in which he had left the office after the operation. He was unconscious, mumbling in a delirium, evidently very ill. Peter Schmidt picked up the cablegram lying on the floor. He and Miss Burns felt that in the circumstances they were justified in learning its contents. What they read was: Dear Frederick, news from Jena. In spite of the greatest care Angele passed away yesterday afternoon. Take the inevitable with composure. Keep yourself well for your loving old parents. For a week Frederick hovered between life and death. The powers of darkness, perhaps, had never grappled for him so greedily. For a week his whole body was like something about which tongues of fire lick and roar, ready to consume it and send it up into the air, like a puff of smoke. Peter Schmidt, of course, brought all his medical skill to his friend's service. Mrs. Schmidt, too, did whatever she could for him. Miss Burns felt it was predestination, not chance, that had brought her to his side at so critical a moment, and instantly decided not to leave until he was entirely out of danger. She engaged a woman attendant and a man to go on errands by day and night. The terrible frenzy in which Frederick had been the night before was apparent from the way in which things had been thrown about. The glass of his seaman's clock on the wall was broken, and dishes were shivered to bits. Peter Schmidt's diagnosis was typhoid fever. The first two days and nights he did not leave Frederick's side, except when his wife took his place. The paroxysms repeated themselves. Memories of the shipwreck still tormented him, and at certain hours he would tell his attendants, whom he did not recognise, to look in a corner of the room, where, he said, a black spider, the size of a bowling ball, was lying in wait for him. Peter and his wife with extreme caution applied all the means at a physician's disposal to reduce his temperature; but the third day passed, and still it did not fall below 105.8 deg.. Peter grew graver and graver. Finally, however, the fever curve showed declinations, and by the end of a week its downward course remained pretty constant.