“All right, all right. Tell Claib to put up Rocket, till another day, and then we’ll go together, you and I,” and Hugh sank back upon his pillow, just as the wheezy colonel come in, greatly alarmed and surprised to find the young man so ill. “It beats all,” he said, “how symptoms differ. That buzzing he complained of wasn’t an atom like my wife’s—beats all;” then turning to Alice he delivered a message from Ellen who was better, and had expressed a wish to see Miss Johnson, hoping she might be induced to return with her father. But Alice would not leave Hugh, and she declined the colonel’s invitation. “That’s right. Stick to him,” the colonel said. “He’s a noble fellow, odd as Dick’s hat band, but got the right kind of spirit. Poor boy. It makes me feel to see him some as I felt when my Hal lay ravin’ mad with the dumb fever in his head. Poor Hal! He is up in the grave-yard now. Good day to you all. I’ve got a pesky job on hand getting that Rocket home.” And the colonel was right, for Rocket stubbornly refused to move, kicking and biting as he had done once before when any one approached him. He had taken his stand near by the block where Hugh had been accustomed to mount him, and there he staid, evidently waiting for his master, sometimes glancing toward the house and uttering a low whinny. “I reckon I’ll have to leave him here for a spell,” the colonel said at last when every stratagem had been resorted to in vain. “Yes, I ’specs mas’r will,” returned the delighted Claib, who, had let one or two good opportunities pass for seizing Rocket’s bridle. “I’ll get Mas’r Tiffton anodder nag,” and with great alacrity the negro saddled a handsome bay, on which the colonel was soon riding away from Spring Bank, leaving Rocket standing patiently by the block, and waiting for the master who might never come to him again. “I’m glad he’s roused up,” the doctor said of Hugh, “though I don’t like the way his fever increases,” and Alice knew by the expression of his face, that there was but little hope, determining not to leave him during the night. Aunt Eunice might sleep on the lounge, she said, but the care, the responsibility should be hers. To this the doctor willingly acceded, thinking that Hugh was safer with her than any one else. Exchanging the white wrapper she had worn through the day for one more suitable, Alice, after an hour’s rest in her own room, returned to Hugh, who had missed her and who knew the moment she came back to him, even though, he seemed to be half asleep.