"Your tongue, woman! open your mouth--don't you hear?" Jane Chester unclosed her parched lips and revealed her tongue. The edges were red, as if they had been dipped in blood; and down the centre, like an arrow, lay the dark incrustations peculiar to ship fever. The clerk shook his head, and laid his hand upon the sinking pulse. "Low, very low. Just gone of consumption--no doubt of it--phthisis pulmonalis--a bad case--very. Take her to the wing!" "I should doubt, if you are not a physician, sir," said the stranger, mildly, "I should venture to doubt, if this lady is not suffering from fever. Not half an hour ago her pulse could hardly be counted; now you feel that each beat threatens to be the last! These terrible changes--do they bespeak consumption?" "I have pronounced upon her case!" replied the clerk, "but it makes no difference. Let her go to the fever ward. If the doctor don't agree with your opinion, sir, she can be sent to the wing!" "I am no physician, but she requires prompt care!" interposed the stranger. "Then you are not an M. D.," cried the clerk, with a look of annoyance that he should have yielded to anything less than a professional man. "No, but it is quite certain that all this moving about from place to place is killing the poor lady. She requires the greatest tranquillity, I am sure!" "Well, well, take her up to number ten," said the clerk, addressing the persons who had brought Mrs. Chester in. "The doctor will see to her when he goes his rounds!" The two men raised Mrs. Chester in their arms, and carried her up a flight of broad stairs and through a neighboring passage, till the stranger, who looked earnestly after them, could no longer detect the faint struggle with which she sought to free herself, or hear the moan as it trembled on her pallid lips. The stranger drew a deep breath as she disappeared, and turned back to the office greatly oppressed by all that he saw. The clerk was leaning back in his chair, drumming with his fingers upon the seat. Inured to an atmosphere of misery, he felt but little of the painful compassion, the mingled horror and pity which almost overwhelmed that benevolent man. "You are sure, quite sure, that this poor lady will be cared for," said the kind man, addressing the clerk. "Here is money, I would give more, but am some distance from home and may require all that I have--see that she wants for no little comfort that can be bought!" The clerk's eye brightened as he saw the money. "Oh, be sure, sir, she shall have every care." "I have a letter for the resident physician--where can he be found?" "Oh, he has just started for the island in his boat. The aldermen and their families dine at the Insane Asylum, and he has gone with them. You might have seen his yellow flag on the water as you came in." "And when will he return to the Hospital?" "Oh, in a day or two; his rooms are in the other building, but he usually walks over the wards once or twice a week!"