Once, in South America, he and a companion had worked over a man who was dying from exhaustion. They had administered stimulants and had wrapped the man in hot blankets. Baird had ransacked the living-room and the kitchen, had come upon the family supply of simple remedies, among them a bottle of spirits of camphor, and, in the cedar chest beneath the stairs, had found a feather-bed laid away for the summer. He had built a fire in the kitchen stove and had heated water. Baird had set to work then upon Ann's cold limp body, had taken off her shoes and stockings and had chafed her icy feet with hot water and camphor. He had opened her dress and had rubbed her chest and her arms and her hands with it. Then he had wrapped her closely in the feather-bed, and, lastly, he had tried to make her swallow a little of the mixture. Though he had worked quickly, it had taken time, a lifetime of effort and of waiting, it had seemed to Baird, before even a slight warmth had crept into her body. When his fingers discovered a throb in her wrists, Baird was uplifted; he sprang from despair to hope. When her chest began gently to lift and fall, he climbed to the height of gratitude. For an hour he had sat almost motionless, feeling life grow beneath his fingers, watching the ghastly white in Ann's face change to a more life-like hue. It seemed to him that the life in her was trying to answer to the life in him, that each throb of his heart transmitted a little and still a little more of its bounding vitality to her, and, gradually, a curious certainty had taken possession of Baird: that through his finger-tips he was pouring his superabundant strength into Ann's limp body, while with all his force he was willing her to live. The conviction possessed him so completely that it blotted out the disjointed thoughts that had obtruded while he had longed for other assistance than his own: his anxiety over the absence of Ann's people; the suggestion that they had traveled by the Post-Road and had fallen into the death-trap he had left unguarded; his pangs of retrospective jealousy; his hopes for the future. He was so concentrated upon his idea that all extraneous thoughts and impressions had faded from his brain. The collie had thrust himself in through the partly-open door and had nosed Baird's absorption and Ann's muffled form, and Baird had scarcely noticed him; the murky, indeterminate night had resolved itself into a steady rain, and Baird had not been aware of it; the clock had struck a single definite note, and Baird had not heard it, for Ann had stirred at last, had moved her head and sighed.