It was the most curious case of croup I had ever attended. Not that there was anything unusual about the symptoms--they were so correct as to be devoid of the slightest interest. Certainly they were not worth while being called up for in the middle of the night. The patient it was that attracted my attention. He was a handsome baby of one year and nine months--by name Willy Streetside--with such an expression of candour and intelligence that I was moved to see him suffer. I sat down by his bedside, took his poor little feverish hand, and felt the weak quick pulse, and knew it had not much longer to beat. I put the glass of barley and water to his lips, and he drank eagerly. He seemed to be an orphan, in charge of a strange, silent serving-man, apparently the only other occupant of the luxurious and artistically furnished flat. I judged Downton to be a man of some culture, from the latest magazines strewn about the bedroom; but I could not help thinking that a female, more familiar with infantile ailments, might have been more useful. Apathetic and torpid though I was, from eighteen hours' continuous activity in a hundred sickrooms, my eyes filled with tears, and I sat for an instant, holding the little hand, listening to the poor child's painful breathing, and speculating on the mystery of that existence so early recalled. All his organs were sound. But for this accidental croup, I told myself, he might have lived till eighty. "Poor Willy Streetside!" I murmured, for his curious name clung to my memory. Suddenly the baby turned his blue eyes full on me, and said: "I suppose it's all up, doctor?" I started violently, and let go his hand. The words were perhaps not altogether beyond the capacity of an infant; but the air of manly resignation with which they were uttered was astonishing. For more reasons than one, I hesitated. "You need not be afraid to tell me the truth," said the baby, with a wistful smile; "I'm not afraid to hear it." "Well--well, you're pretty bad," I stammered. "Ah! thank you," the child replied gratefully. "How many hours do you give me?" The baby's gravity took my breath away. He spoke with an old-world courtesy and the ingenuous stateliness of an infant prince. "It may not be quite hopeless," I murmured. Willy shook his head, the pretty, wan features distorted by a quaint grimace. "I suppose I'm too young to rally," he said quietly, and closed his eyes. Presently he re-opened them, and added: "But I should have liked to live to see the Irish question settled." "You would?" I ejaculated, overwhelmed. "Yes," he said, adding with a whimsical expression in the wee blue eyes: "You mustn't think I crave for earthly immortality. I use 'settled' in a merely rough sense. My mother was an Irish poetess, over whose songs impetuous Celts still break their hearts and their heads."