“Poor little devil, I am afraid I have done for her!” said Hanson to himself, in some alarm, as he hastily and awkwardly unfastened the child’s clothes and took off her upper garments, her hat, frock, shoes and stockings. Then he lifted her in his arms, bore her into the next room and laid her in the cool, fresh bed. “I wonder if they have put any ice water in the room?” he said, as he went in search of some. Yes; he found a pitcher full, fished out a lump of ice, broke it into small pieces and put it in a glass. Then he took a towel, put it in the washbasin, poured ice water over it, squeezed it out, folded it, and with that and the pounded ice returned to the little room and to the child’s bedside. Then he bathed her face, laid the cold, wet towel on her hot and throbbing forehead, and put a thin flake of ice within her parched lips. She sucked it mechanically and murmured in her sleep: “Lady—Ducky Darling—chickies.” Hanson sat down beside her, gave her little chips of ice and renewed the wet towels on her head at intervals. Her skin seemed getting cooler, her breathing softer, but her pulse was still very quick. “She is going to be ill, I fear. But she is certainly not in any imminent danger at present,” he said, as he arose from his chair, lowered the gas and left the room. He went downstairs to the supper room and ordered a small but epicurean repast. After he had partaken of this he passed into the reading room and looked over all the day’s papers. Finally he lighted a cigar, and went out for a stroll on the sidewalk. It was after one o’clock when he re-entered the house and went up to his rooms. He found Owlet much worse than he had left her. She was burning up with fever, moaning and turning in her sleep. “This will never do. She is going to be very ill. I must have a physician in the morning. But what if he discovers that the child has been drugged? I shall have to tell him that she has been suffering from malarial fever, accompanied with severe pain in her limbs, and that I had to give her morphia on the train. But I must do what I can for the poor little wretch to-night. This is not opium poisoning, however. It is something else. The combined effect of all that has happened to her to-day. And it need not be fatal,” Hanson concluded, as he took off his coat and sat down beside the child to watch her through the night and cool her scorching head with cold towels and her parched throat with flakes of ice. No good woman could have been more tender in her ministrations than was this bad man, though their motives would have been different—the first serving from love or benevolence, the second from selfishness, though something of pity, compunction and apprehension entered into his motive. He dozed in his armchair by the bedside of the child, but woke whenever she moaned or tossed, and moistened her lips with flakes of ice, or cooled her forehead by a fresh application of a wet towel.