For a second her mind wavered before him. He could actually see the totter in her eyes, and braced himself for the final hopeless crash, but suddenly all her being focused to the realization of his words, and she pushed at him with her hands and cried: "No--No--Oh, my God--_n-o_!" and fainted in his arms. When she woke up again the little-girl look was all gone from her face, and though the Young Doctor smiled and smiled and smiled, he could not smile it back again. She just lay and watched him questioningly. "Sweetheart," he whispered at last, "do you remember what I told you?" "Yes," she answered gravely, "I remember that, but I don't remember what it means. Is it all right? Is it all right to _you_?" "Yes," said the Young Doctor, "it's--all--right to--me." Then the Sick-A-Bed Lady turned her little face wearily away on her pillow and went back to those dreams of hers which no one could fathom. For all the dragging weeks and months that followed she lay in her bed or groped her way round her room in a sort of timid stupor. Whenever the Young Doctor was there she clung to him desperately and seemed to find her only comfort in his presence, but when she talked to him it was babbling talk of things and places he could not understand. All the village feared for the imminent tragedy in the great white house, and mourned the pathetic absence of the young husband, and the Young Doctor went his sorrowful way cursing that other "boy" who had wrought this final disaster on a girl's life. But when the Sick-A-Bed Lady's hour of trial came and some one held the merciful cone of ether to her face, the Sick-A-Bed Lady took one deep, heedless breath, then gave suddenly a great gasp, snatched the cone from her face, struggled up and stretched out her arms and cried, "Boy--Boy!" The Young Doctor came running to her and saw that her eyes were big and startled and sharp with terror: "Oh, Boy--_Boy_," she cried, "the Ether!--I remember _everything_ now--I--was his wife--the Old Doctor's Wife!" The Young Doctor tried to replace the cone, but she beat at him furiously with her hands, crying: "No, No, No!--If you give me Ether I shall die thinking of him!--Oh, no!--_n-o_!" The Young Doctor's face was like chalk. His knees shook under him. "My God!" he said, "what _can_ I give you!" The Sick-A-Bed Lady looked up at him and smiled a tortured, gallant smile. "Give me something to keep me here," she gasped! "Give me a token of you! Give me your little briarwood pipe to smell--and give it to me--quickly!" HICKORY DOCK Used by permission of _Lippincott's Magazine_. THIS is the story of Hickory Dock, and of a Man and a Girl who trifled with Time. Hickory Dock was a clock, and, of course, the Man, being a man, called it a clock, but the Girl, being a girl, called it a Hickory Dock for no more legitimate reason than that once upon a time "Hickory, Dickory, Dock, A Mouse ran up the Clock." --Girls are funny things.