"No, the quickest way will be to take her to a doctor, not bring a doctor to her!" "But if she is dead we ought not to move her! That's the law." "Law? I don't care anything about the law! Life is what I'm thinking of! We don't know whether she's dead or not. Crank your car! I'll get some blankets--" He hurried out, and she rushed up-stairs for blankets. She was folding them about Flora when he came in, the car chugging loudly at the door. Again, lifting and straining, they carried her out, and got her into the tonneau. Then Frederica saw the lamp down on the wharf, burning steadily in the mist. "Put it out! Put it out! Hurry!" she commanded; and while he ran to do it she darted back to blow out the candles in the living-room and snap the lock of the front door--"never mind about taking the lamp into the house. Leave it on the porch!" she said. Then she got in the car and, sitting down, put an arm about the crumpling, sodden form. Zip, fearful of being left, jumped on the front seat, and glanced wonderingly back at his mistress. "Fred," Howard said, agitatedly, "I think she's--dead." "So do I; but _hurry_! Don't lose a minute!" Then, through the noise of the clutch, she screamed at him: "Doctor Emma Holt! In Laketon!" And the car jerked forward. "But that's a woman doctor," he called, over his shoulder. Just for a moment the habit of revolt asserted itself: "_Why not?_" Then, "Hurry! Hurry!" Dr. Emma Holt was five miles away. "I felt," Howard Maitland used to say, afterward, "as if she were fifty miles away!" The fog was so thick it was impossible to speed with safety, so they sped without it, and tore bumping along through the white smother. Twice he looked around, and saw Fred sitting there, rigid, with that face, open-mouthed, open-eyed, gray under its brown skin, wabbling, and dripping on her shoulder. "She is magnificent!" he thought. "_I_ couldn't do it." The second time he looked, some reflection from the lamps, gleaming in the fog, flickered on that set face, and it seemed as if the eyes closed, then opened again. The horror of it made his hand jerk on the wheel, and there was a skid out of the ruts that frightened him into carefulness. When he sprang out at the house of the "woman doctor," he dared not glance back into the tonneau. Hammering on the panels of the door, and keeping his thumb on the bell, he called up to an opening window on the second floor: "Doctor! Hurry! A woman has got drowned! Hurry!" "Where is she?" came a laconic voice from the window. "Here! In my car! Hurry!" The window slammed down; a minute later the electric lights were snapped on in the sleeping house, and hurrying feet came along the hall. CHAPTER XX "Of course," Dr. Holt said, when it was plain that nothing more could be done, "you ought to have left her where she was." "But we didn't know whether she was alive--" they excused themselves.