’No, it was mine,’ the Doctor said curtly. ’I shouldn’t have given up the tiller. Fact is, the girls were just mad about that "Dancing in the Barn"; and I was fool enough to yield to them. I tell you, Jack, it isn’t half as easy as it looks steering a boat that’s running fair before the wind; I don’t blame you at all; I dare say there was a nasty puff that caught you when you weren’t looking; anyhow, it’s a blessing no one was hit by the boom—that was what I feared at first for Miss Hodson when I found her insensible—I was afraid she had been hit about the head——’ ’And you don’t think it was absolute carelessness?’ the other said quickly. ’Mind, I was steering straight for the pier, as you said.’ ’Oh, well,’ said the young Doctor evasively, ’if you had noticed in time, you know—or when I called to you—but perhaps it was too late then. It’s no use going back on that now; what we have to do now is to fight this fever as well as we can.’ ’I would take it over from her if I could,’ Jack Huysen said, ’and willingly enough.’ It was not until early the next morning that Mr. Hodson arrived. He looked dreadfully pale and harassed and fatigued; for the fact was he was not in Chicago when they telegraphed for him; some business affairs had called him away to the south; and the news of his daughter’s illness followed him from place to place until it found him in a remote corner of Louisiana, whence he had travelled night and day without giving himself an hour’s rest. And now he would not stay to dip his hands and face in cold water after his long and anxious journey; he merely asked a few hurried questions of the Doctor; and then, stealthily and on tip-toe, and determined to show no sign of alarm or perturbation, he went into Carry’s room. She had been very delirious during the night—talking wildly and frantically in spite of all their efforts to soothe her; but now she lay exhausted, with the flushed face, and bluish lips, and eager, restless eyes so strangely unlike the Carry of other days. She recognised him at once—but not as a new-comer: she appeared to think he had been there all the time. ’Have you seen him, pappa?’ she said, in that eager way. ’Did you see him when you were out?’ ’Who, darling?’ he said, as he sate down beside her and took her wasted hand in his. ’Why, Ronald, to be sure! Oh, something dreadful was about to happen to him—I don’t know what it was—something dreadful and dreadful—and I called out—at the window—at the window there—and nurse says it is all right now—all right now——’ ’Oh yes, indeed,’ her father said gently, ’you may depend it is all right with Ronald now. Don’t you fret about that.’