Wednesday evening his fever was slightly lower and he lay comparatively quiet. Sitting by the screen which kept the light of the night lamp from his eyes was Grace Burns. She had been a nurse only a little while, and to her Bridge was not a case but a man. She felt a great pity for the pathetic figure on the bed and, when she saw that it was good for him to have her by, she spent more than half the hours of the twenty-four watching him. She was a young woman, not yet thirty, and she had the poise which comes from nerves that are never out of tune. Some of her nervous strength she seemed to impart to him, and he was rarely violent while under her care. Now as she watched him she saw him throw back the covers and sit up on the edge of the bed. The movement was so quick that before she could reach him he was struggling to his feet. “The contract,” he said. “I must take it to him right away.” His voice and his inflection were perfectly natural. “Yes,” she said easily, “I'll attend to that. There's plenty of time. Now lie down again.” He looked at her in a puzzled, questioning way, but obeyed, and in a few moments his moaning told her that the dull fever dreams had again come upon him. When the doctor came to make his last visit before the night, he looked grave. “Has he had any lucid intervals?” he asked. She told him what had happened earlier in the evening. “It's hard to tell,” he said, “whether that was dreams or not.” As he started to go, she asked,-- “Did they tell you downstairs that some one had been here to see him?” He shook his head. “He came while I was down in the office, and they said he had been here two or three times before. He wanted to see Mr. Bridge, he said, on a very important business matter.” The doctor smiled. “I'm afraid,” he said, “that business will be indefinitely postponed. Who was the man?” “He's one of our aldermen, Michael Blaney.” They were startled by a cry from the bed. Bridge was sitting bolt upright, and terror was in his face. “Stop him, Weeks!” he gasped. “He's trying to choke me. Pull him off. You said he shouldn't touch me.” The voice died away in a moan, and he sank back in the pillows, breathing thickly. The nurse slipped quickly to his side, clasped his wrist in her cool hand, and laid the other on his forehead, and in a few moments his breath was coming more regularly and the mad light was gone out of his eyes. The doctor looked on admiringly. “You'll pull him out of this if anybody can,” he said. “It's strange he's got this Weeks business in his head. He hasn't known anything since Sunday night, and there wasn't much about it in the papers up to that time.” There was a silence while the doctor, after a long look at his patient, turned and walked to the door. When he reached it he said:--