Then, as the movement of her body quieted in some measure the turmoil of her brain, her pace grew slower, and she began to think connectedly. And at last she dropped into the chair again, leaned her elbows on her kneel and sat gazing into the fire. When it burned low she piled on wood mechanically, and sat there thinking, thinking. Outside, the storm raged furiously, and the flying sand hit the window like hailstones. And inside, the woman sat gazing into the fire and thinking. She sat long into the night, thinking, thinking--unconscious of the passage of time;--thinking, thinking. Twice her child woke crying to be fed, and each time she fed him from the pannikin as mechanically almost as she had fed the fire with wood. For her thoughts were strange long thoughts, and she could not see the end of them. They were all sent flying by the sudden entrance of her mother in a state of extreme agitation, her face all crumpled, her hands shaking. "She's took," she said, with a break in her voice. "Yo' mun go for th' doctor quick. I connot leave her. Nay!"--as the other sat bolt upright and stared back at her--"yo' _mun_ go. We connot have her die on our hands. Think o' yore own time, lass, and go quick for sake o' Heaven." "I'll go." And she snatched up her cloak. "See to the child." And she was out in the night, drifting before the gale like an autumn leaf. The old woman went in to look at the child, filled the kettle and put it on the fire, and hurried back to the chamber of sorrows. The gale broke at sunrise, and the flats lay shimmering like sheets of burnished gold, when Dr. Yool turned at last from the bedside and looked out of the window upon the freshness of the morning. He was in a bitter humour. When Nance Lee thumped on his door at midnight he was engaged in the congenial occupation of mixing a final and unusually stiff glass of rum and water. It was in the nature of a soporific--a nightcap. It was to be the very last glass for that night, and he had compounded it with the tenderest care and the most businesslike intention. "If that won't give me a night's rest," he said to himself, "nothing will." But there was no rest for him that night. He had been on the go since daybreak, and was fairly fagged out. He greeted Nance's imperative knock with bad language. But when he heard her errand he swallowed his nightcap without a wink, though it nearly made his hair curl, ran round with her to the stable, harnessed his second cob to the little black gig with the yellow wheels, threw Nance into it, and in less than five minutes was wrestling with the north-easter once more, and spitting out the sand as he had been doing off and on all day long.