"You must see to your sister," he said. "She looks the way my father did. You ought to get her out of here. She's going off for two weeks, but that won't set her right. Go look at her!" Bartell found his sister where Ewing had left her. "Well, Nell, how is it now? What did Birley say?" She stirred impatiently in her chair. "He wouldn't commit himself. He told me to rest away from here for two weeks and then come back to see a specialist he'd send me to, a man who knows--such things." "I just met Ewing--he spoke of how badly you look. I'm worried, Nell. You're not going to be left here." "I must tell you something, dear--oh, a ghastly joke, if ever there was one: You know that one death trap of a tenement I've had so much trouble with----" "Where all those consumptives were? Yes." "They've died there like sheep. I had it inspected--I wanted to have the owner compelled to build it over or something, but we always found that the law had been cunningly met with--not the spirit of it, but the letter. The airshafts and drains were bad enough to kill, but not bad enough to hurt the owner. Yesterday I determined to find out who the owner was, to make a personal appeal. I was willing to buy the place myself." She stopped in a fit of coughing, a dry, hard, tearing cough that left her exhausted. "Well, Sis?" "I went to the agents--this will make you cry or laugh; I did both--and I found they were my agents--the house was my house." "Poor Sis!" "One of those Dick left--_mine_, you understand. I've been spending the blood of those people, eating, wearing, amusing myself with it." "Yes, and going down there to get caught in the same trap. I don't see anything funny about that." "Alden Teevan would. I must tell him of it--my own dungeon closing in on me." "Nonsense! You're morbid, girl. Tenements have got to be dirty. Trinity Church itself has a fine bunch of the worst kind." "I'm not a church, dear. This tenement is coming down. I gave orders to-day." "Well, you stay away from it. You're in bad shape, my girl." "Two weeks at Kensington will put me right." "Two weeks nothing! See here, if you act up, I'll rope you and hustle you out to the ranch and close herd you there for about six months." She smiled weakly at him. "I shall be all right, dear--but you can help me upstairs now." "Too tired for a roof garden?" "I'm afraid so." "Or a broiled lobster?" "Not to-night, dear." He helped her up the stairs, alternately scolding her for her weakness and protesting that broiled lobsters were all that kept him from forgetting the existence of Manhattan. CHAPTER XXIII THE LITTLE LAND