Boyd Connoway frowned portentously at his eldest son. The youth shook his head. The sign was well understood, especially when helped out with a grin, broad as all County Donegal 'twixt Killibegs and Innishowen Light. The "Misthress" was in a good temper. Reassured, on his own account, but inwardly no little alarmed for his wife's health in these unusual circumstances, Boyd began to take off his boots with the idea of gliding safely into bed and pretending to be asleep before the wind had time to change. But Jerry's mouth was very evidently forming some words, which were meant to inform his father as to particulars. These, though unintelligible individually, being taken together and punctuated with jerks in the direction of the shut door of "doon-the-hoose," constituted a warning which Boyd Connoway could not afford to neglect. He went forward to the left hand bed, cocked his ear in the direction of the closed door, and then rapidly lowered it almost against his son's lips. "She's gotten a hurt man down there," said Jerry, "she has been runnin' wi' white clouts and bandages a' the forenight. And I'm thinkin' he's no very wise, either--for he keeps cryin' that the deils are comin' to tak' him!" "What like of a man?" said Boyd Connoway. But Jerry's quick ear caught a stirring in the room with the closed door. He shook his head and motioned his father to get away from the side of his low truckle bed. When his wife entered, Boyd Connoway, with a sober and innocent face, was untying his boot by the side of the fire. Bridget entered with a saucepan in her hand, which, before she deigned to take any notice of her husband, she pushed upon the red ashes in the grate. From the "ben" room, of which the door was now open, Boyd could hear the low moaning of a man in pain. He had tended too many sick people not to know the delirium of fever, the pitiful lapses of sense, then again the vague and troubled pour of words, and at the sound he started to his feet. He was not good for much in the way of providing for a family. He did a great many foolish, yet more useless things, but there was one thing which he understood better than Bridget--how to nurse the sick. He disengaged his boot and stood in his stocking feet. "What is it?" he said, in an undertone to Bridget. "No business of yours!" she answered, with a sudden hissing vehemence. "I can do _that_ better than you!" he answered, for once sure of his ground. His wife darted at him a look of concentrated scorn. "Get to bed!" she commanded him, declining to argue with such as he--and but for the twinkling eyes of Jerry, which looked sympathy, Boyd would have preferred to have joined the exiled Ephraim under the dark pent among the coom of the peat-house. He looked to Jerry, but Jerry was sound asleep. So was Phil. So were all the others.