Mrs. Strobe’s head was cocked askew in inquiry. What kind of a “doctor-man” was this who abode with Jake Baintree? Then, as a strange, angry mutter came from the room within, she looked over her shoulder with a frightened gesture. “Ennybody ez be named ‘doctor’ mought ez well try thar hand on Eli, kase ef they can’t make him no better, I reckon they can’t make him no wuss,” she assented, not too graciously. Her sharp eyes strove to pierce the gloom that hung about the dusky shadow that followed Jake Baintree toward the door. There was still suggested in the manner of the figure that reluctance which Marcella had noted at the forge. It angered her in some sort and it excited her curiosity. She felt an antagonism toward him, despite the anxious, absorbing emotions that might have been supposed to crowd out every other sentiment. The next moment she had forgotten all except that she had brought help where it was so sorely needed. In the necessity for exertion during the last hour and the hardships of the storm, she had been spared something of the full realization of the calamity that had befallen them. But as Mrs. Strobe opened the door, and Marcella caught sight of her father anew, she winced from the strange metamorphosis that delirium had wrought; the alien spirit that possessed the accustomed face and figure almost thwarted recognition. He had risen, wrapped in the sheets, still clinging to his spectral delusion; and as the flicker of the fire rose and fell, and the tallow dip flared and sputtered, his sheeted figure, with its bandaged bloody head, was dim and ghostly in the dusky corner of the cabin where he stood, fantastically gesticulating, unnoting the new-comers even while his burning eyes were riveted upon them, still muttering his threats of vengeance on the man who he declared had slain him. “Scot-free! Scot-free,” he exclaimed. “I’ll walk! I’ll walk!” Jake Baintree’s hat fell from his nerveless hand, as he stood gazing, open-mouthed, at the phenomenon of frenzy for the first time presented to his scanty experience. Mrs. Strobe and Isabel, somewhat accustomed to their terrors, took heed of it with a certain painful curiosity as to its further developments. “He ’lows he air a harnt,” said Mrs. Strobe in a low voice to Baintree. “An’ ef that air the way he air goin’ ter behave whenst he air dead, a body oughter take a power o’ pains ter keep him alive. I hope he’ll last out my time, the Lord knows.” Marcella blessed the tears that crowded out the sight, and as she turned to the stranger, who was entering last of all, and wiped her eyes with the fringed end of the wet shawl, all her heart was in the words, as she adjured him, “Fur the Lord’s sake! Fur the Lord’s sake!” and fell to sobbing anew.