It was a simple matter, as she had said; the medicine from the larger bottle was to be given in tea-spoonful doses on the even hour, and that in the smaller, ten drops in a little water, on the alternating half-hours. "It's his heart chiefly, now," she explained, "and this drop-medicine is for that. If you should forget to give it--but I know you won't forget. There are books in the hall case, and you can sit in here and read. When you are tired, come and tap at the door of my room and I'll take what you leave." While she was speaking the softly chiming clock in the lower hall struck the half-hour. "I'll help you give him the first dose," she went on; and he stood by and watched her as she dropped the heart-stimulant into a spoon and diluted it with a little water. "Come," she said; and they went together into the adjoining room. Griswold had been hardening himself deliberately to look unmoved upon what the shaded electric night-light in the farther room should reveal: it was nothing more terrible than the sight of a drawn face, half-hidden in the pillows; a face in which life and death still fought for the mastery as they had fought on that other day when life, unhelped, would have been the loser. The small service was quickly rendered. Griswold lifted the sick man, and his companion, deft and steady-handed, administered the stimulant. "Ten drops; no more and no less; exactly on the half-hour: those are Doctor Bertie's orders," she said, when they had withdrawn to the outer room. And then: "Good-night, for a little while. Don't hesitate to call me when you've had enough." For so long as he could distinguish her light step in the corridor, Griswold stood motionless as she had left him. Then he flung himself into the nearest chair and covered his face with his hands. * * * * * The quarter-hour passed, and after the three mellow strokes had died away the silence grew slowly maddening. When inaction was no longer bearable, Griswold sprang up and went to stand at the open window. The summer night was hot and breathless. In the north-west a storm cloud was creeping up into the sky, and he watched its black shadow climbing like a terrifying threat of doom out of the illimitable and blotting out the stars one by one.... "For man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain...." Out of a childhood which seemed very far away and unreal the words of the Psalmist came to ring in his ears like the muffled tolling of a passing-bell. So it must be soon for all the living; and whether a little sooner or a little later, what could it matter? A breath more or less to be drawn; a longer or shorter fluttering of the feeble heart; that was all.