They sat with heads thrust forward, listening in the intolerable silence. Dan lifted the blanket, hearkened a moment, then--"pst!" another bit of iron fell into the pail. Dan stooped to the tool-chest for a reserve supply when a strangling cough made him spring to his feet and hurriedly lift the blanket. The child was beating the air with tiny fists, fighting for breath. The mother stood rigid, arms out. "Turn her this way!" Dan shifted the struggling child, face out. "Now watch out for the--" The strangling cough broke and a horrible something--"It's the membrane! She's too weak--let me have her!" Dan snatched the child and turned it face downward. The blue-faced baby fought in a supreme effort--again the horrible something--then Dan laid the child, white and motionless, in her mother's arms. She held the limp body close, her eyes wide with fear. "Dan, is--is she--?" A faint sobbing breath of relief fluttered the pale lips that moved in the merest ghost of a smile. The heavy eyelids half-lifted and the child nestled against its mother's breast. The girl swayed, shaking with sobs, "Baby--baby!" She struggled for self-control and stood up straight and pale. "Dan, I ought to tell you. When it began to get dark with the storm and time to put up the lantern, I was afraid to leave the baby. If she strangled when I was gone--with no one to help her--she would die!" Her lips quivered as she drew the child closer. "I didn't go right away but--I did--at last. I propped her up in bed and ran. If I hadn't--" Her eyes were wide with the shadowy edge of horror, "if I hadn't--you'd have been lost in the blizzard and--my baby would have died!" She stood before the men as if for judgment, her face wet with unchecked tears. Dan patted her shoulder dumbly and touched a fresh, livid bruise that ran from the curling hair on her temple down across cheek and chin. "Did you get this then?" She nodded. "The storm threw me against the pole when I hoisted the lantern. I thought I'd--never--get back!" It was Smith who translated Dan's look of appeal for the cup of warm milk and held it to the girl's lips. "Drink it, Mis' Clark, you need it." She made heroic attempts to swallow, her head drooped lower over the cup and fell against the driver's rough sleeve. "Poor kid, dead asleep!" Dan guided her stumbling feet toward the bed that the traveller sprang to open. She guarded the baby in the protecting angle of her arm into safety upon the pillow, then fell like a log beside her. Dan slipped off the felt boots, lifted her feet to the bed and softly drew covers over mother and child. "Poor kid, but she's grit, clear through!" Dan walked to the window, looked out at the lessening storm, then at the tiny alarm-clock on the cupboard. "Be over pretty soon now!" He seated himself by the table, dropped his head wearily forward on folded arms and was asleep.