Then he grew delirious again. It was only at intervals he had these gleams of consciousness. After awhile his eyes closed wearily. He seemed to sink into a heavy stupor. Bethany sat holding his hand, with the tears silently dropping down into her lap as she looked at the worn fingers clasped over hers. What a world of good that hand had done! How unselfishly it had toiled on for others, to wipe out the brother's disgrace, to surround the little wife with comforts, to provide the boy with the best of everything! Besides all that, it had filled, as far as lay in its power, every other needy hand, stretched out toward its sympathetic clasp. She sat beside him a long time, but he did not waken from the heavy sleep into which he had fallen, even when she gently withdrew her fingers, and moved away to let Dr. Mills take her place. He had just come in again. "Will you need me here to-night, Belle?" asked Bethany. The nurse turned to Dr. Mills inquiringly. He shook his head. "Miss Carleton can do all that is necessary," he said. "I shall come again about midnight, and stay the rest of the night, if I am needed. He will probably have no more rational awakenings while this fever keeps at such a frightful heat. If we can subdue that soon, he has such great vitality he may pull through all right." "You'd better go back, dear," urged the nurse. "You have your work ahead of you to-morrow, and you look very tired." "I have an almost unbearable headache," admitted Bethany, "or I would not think of leaving. I would not go even for that, if I thought he would have conscious intervals of any length; but the doctor thinks that is hardly probable to-night. I'll come back early in the morning. Maybe he will know me then." "Are you going, too?" asked Lee, clinging wistfully to David's hand, as Bethany put on her hat. "Would you like me to stay?" he asked, kindly. Lee swallowed hard, and winked fast to keep back the tears. "Everybody else is strangers," he said, with his lip trembling. David put his arm around him caressingly. His sympathies went out strongly to the little lad, who might so soon be left fatherless. "Then I'll come back and stay with you till you go to sleep, after I take Miss Hallam home," he promised. CHAPTER XIII. A LITTLE PRODIGAL. LEE was waiting disconsolately on the stairs, with Taffy beside him, when David opened the door and stepped into the hall. The landlady was up-stairs with the nurse, and all the boarders had gone to a concert, so the parlor was vacant, and David took the boy in there. He gave him an intricate chain-puzzle to work first, and afterward told him such entertaining stories of his travels that Lee forgot his painful forebodings. The clock in the hall struck ten before either of them was aware how swiftly the time had passed. "Here's a little fellow who doesn't know where he is to sleep," David said to the nurse, when they had noiselessly entered Dr. Trent's room.