So passed the night, until in the gray of the morning, overcome by fatigue, Hanson fell fast asleep in his chair. CHAPTER XIX OWLET’S ADVENTURES It was late in the morning when Hanson awoke—awoke to find the child still worse than on the preceding night. Her whole face was scarlet, her eyes now flared open, wild and bloodshot, her lips parched, her pulse beating almost too fast to be counted. Hanson was at last very much alarmed. Without stopping to slip on his coat, he rang the bell violently, and soon brought a porter hurrying to his door to see what was the matter. “My child is very ill. Ask at once the clerk in the office to send for the nearest physician.” And when the man had gone Hanson dressed himself in great haste and returned to the bedside of his stolen charge. Dr. Paulet, whose office was on the ground floor front of the next house on the right, soon came—a fair, slight, refined-looking man of middle age. Hanson met him anxiously and took him to the bedside of his ward. The doctor made his examination and asked some questions. Hanson answered them all in the way that he had planned to do, and furthermore gave the same account of his possession of the child that he had given to young Larkins. The doctor made no comment on the story. He was very reticent. He said, however, that the child was extremely ill and her recovery doubtful, and that with Mr. Hanson’s consent he would send a trained nurse to take care of her. Hanson expressed himself as more than grateful for the suggestion. Within an hour after the doctor’s departure, a rosy-cheeked, cheerful-looking woman of about forty years of age, presented herself with a note from Dr. Paulet. Not until the nurse was installed by the bedside of the patient did Hanson leave the room to go down and get his matutinal cup of coffee. For the first time in his life, perhaps, he was beginning to feel that there were such things as remorse and fear. For Owlet a dangerous illness followed. Fever and delirium ran high. She raved incessantly—of all her short, past life, of her pretty mamma, of the pantomime, of the ballet, of Santa Claus’ Christmas procession, of “Lady,” of “Ducky Darling,” of the chickens, the garden, the woods—and she warned divers persons—notably Hanson and the doctor—that they were not possessed of common sense; but she recognized no one, or mistook them for some one else, and, strangely enough, she never spoke of her abduction. The events immediately preceding her illness seemed to be effaced from her memory.