Mr. Graham and the Fraulein looked pitifully at one another at the delusion; but they let the lad have the spoon with the drops of brandy. He had already gained experience in giving it, and when they looked for disappointment, his eyes were raised in joy. “It’s gone down,” he said. Mr. Graham put his hand on the pulse and nodded. Another drop or two, and renewed rubbing of hands and feet. The icy cold, the deadly white, were certainly giving way, the lips began to quiver, contract, and gasp. Was it for death or life? They would not call his mother for that terrible, doubtful minute; but she could not long stay away. When Jock’s fingers first relaxed on hers, she crept to the door of the other room, to see Armine upheld on Johnny’s breast, with heaving chest and working features, but with eyes opening: yes, and meeting hers. Johnny always held that he never had so glad a moment in all his life as that when he saw her countenance light up. The first word was “Jock!” Armine’s full perceptions were come back, unlike those of Jock, who was moaning and wandering in his talk, fancying himself still in the desolation of the moraine, with Armine dead in his arms, and all the miseries, bodily, mental and spiritual, from which he had suffered were evidently still working in his brain, though the words that revealed them were weak and disjointed. Besides, he screamed and moaned with absolute and acute pain, which alarmed them much, though Armine was sufficiently himself to be able to assure them that there had been no hurt beyond the strain. It was well that Armine was both rational and unselfish, for nothing seemed to soothe Jock for a moment but his mother’s hand and his mother’s voice. It was plain that fever and rheumatism had a hold upon him, and what or who was there to contend with them in this wayside inn? The rooms, though clean, were bare of all but the merest necessaries, and though the young hostess was kind and anxious, her maids were the roughest and most ignorant of girls, and there were no appliances for comfort--nothing even to drink but milk, bottled lemonade, and a tisane made of yellow flowers, horrible to the English taste. And Jock, ill as he was, did not fill his mother with such dread for the future as did Armine, when she found him, quiet indeed, but unable to lie down, except when supported on John’s breast and in his arms--with a fearful oppression and pain in his chest, and every token that the lungs were suffering. He had not let them call her. Jock’s murmurs and cries were to be heard plainly through the wooden partition, and the little fellow knew she could not be spared, and only tried to prevent John and Mr. Graham from alarming her. “She--can’t--do--any--good,” he gasped out in John’s ear.