While they talked, Jimmy, outside in the shack which he shared with Hillis, was gathering up in a furious rage his small bundle of belongings, cursing darkly as he threw boots, shirts and overalls into a confused heap in the middle of his bunk. Near at hand the tents stood empty in the December sun; five rows of them, four in a row with twenty foot spaces between. Each canvas-covered screen door swung open, and outside sat a camp chair or a big wooden rocker, with blanket or overcoat trailing across it, just as its occupant had left it to go in to dinner. A litter of newspapers and magazines lay all around on the dry Bermuda grass. There was one exception. One screen door was closed, that of the farthest tent on the back row in line with Jimmy's shack. A sound of coughing--choked, convulsive coughing, had been coming from that direction for several minutes, but the sound did not penetrate Jimmy's consciousness until he heard his name called in an agonized tone. He craned his head out to listen. The call came again in a frantic gasp: "Jimmy! Jimmy! Oh, _somebody_ come!" Then he recognized the voice. It was Dane Ward calling him. In his row with Matsu he had forgotten the boy; forgotten that he was to carry him his dinner and give him his medicine. He remembered with a pang of self-reproach that he had promised to come back with fresh wood as soon as he had carried an armful of wood to the kitchen. He started off on a stiff jog-trot towards the tent. A moment later, maybe not even so long as that, for as he ran he knew that he might be racing against death, he dashed into the kitchen which he had sworn never again to enter, and caught up a handful of salt. Hillis, thinking he had lost his mind, almost dropped the tray of dessert dishes he was holding for Matsu to fill; but Mrs. Welsh recognizing the import of Jimmy's act, followed without question as he called back over his shoulder, "It's Dane! The worst hemorrhage the lad's had yet." Hillis carried the news into the dining room with the dessert. Big and strong, never having had a sick day in his life, he could not know the effect it would produce, and Mrs. Welsh had not thought to warn him. The room grew silent. It was what might happen to any one of them; had happened in fact to all. The apprehension of it was the skeleton at their every feast. First one man and then another pushed back his plate and went out into the sunshine. They all liked Dane, the shy, quiet boy from some village in the New York hills. That was all they knew of him, for he always sat apart. Sometimes there was a book in his lap but he rarely read--just sat and gazed off towards the east with a hungry look in his big grey eyes. The homesick longing of them was heart-breaking to see.